


Between The Lines: Opponents

by AntiKryptonite



Series: Between The Lines [4]
Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: AU continuation, F/M, but Haven's so good I can't let it go, season 4, this AU just keeps getting longer and longer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23253538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiKryptonite/pseuds/AntiKryptonite
Summary: "This is your fault," they all say. And they're right, Nathan knows. The sky fell. The world burned. Destruction reigned. The Troubles didn't leave. And all because he pulled the trigger. (All because he dared to believe, for once in his life, that something good could be his.)
Relationships: Audrey Parker/Nathan Wuornos, Duke Crocker/Jennifer Mason (Haven), Lexie DeWitt/Nathan Wuornos
Series: Between The Lines [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1122363
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I'm still here and still plugging away at this impossibly long redundant story that I'm enjoying too much to give up. Hopefully there's still a few of you out there that are still enjoying it with me. I wish I could promise a consistent posting schedule, but...yeah, with things the way they are, not much chance of that. Still, I wanted to get this out there before whoever's reading this thought I'd left it forever, and I'll try to get the rest out in a somewhat timely manner.
> 
> Disclaimer: So much, oh so much, taken from the episodes of Haven, which were written by others and not me. No copyright infringement is intended.

"This is your fault," Jordan says, and Dwight's agreement is plain in his stiff silences, the breadth of his back turned to him, the loss of respect in his eyes (an absence so pointed, so painful, that it makes up for the bullets he can't feel in his chest).

  
"Your fault," Vince says in so many oblique words (he's been saying the same thing for years in just as oblique and obvious ways), and Dave's silence is not an objection.

  
"Your fault," his reflection says, and not even refusing to look at it even for the time it takes to shave can save him from hearing that inarguable reproach.

  
"Your fault," says the Guard, the Troubled, the unTroubled, the Rev's followers (the divisions in Haven finally finding unity in this one thing: in hatred of him).

  
They're right, he knows. 

  
The sky fell. The world burned. Destruction reigned. The Troubles didn't leave.

  
And all because he pulled the trigger.

  
(All because he dared to believe, for once in his life, that something good could be _his_.)

* * *

  
They do not call it penance (but then, they didn't call it ostracism, before, so clearly it is yet one more truth to go unspoken in this town of open secrets). They don't even call it punishment or reparation or justice.

  
Nathan knows it is all these things, and one more: _right_. Right that he work to undo what the catastrophe has brought on them. Right that he have to continually look into the eyes of those who lost people they love (a loss he saw reflected back from his own eyes before he began flinching away from mirrors), flanked by his constant Guard escort (one a cop, one not; guards, jailors, silent executioners taking his life from him one endless day at a time), and to own up to his sins.

  
It's right that this is his fate. 

  
He deserves it.

  
(Because he sinned. Because he was selfish. Because even now, knowing what he has wrought, he does not think he was wrong.)

* * *

  
The station is banned to him. Dwight asked for his badge back two days after the meteors finally stopped falling, and though Dwight let it remain unvoiced, the terms of his exile were clear enough. Without the badge and the gun, his belt feels too light. Or he assumes it does, anyway.

  
He doesn't really know. He can't feel anything (not because the Troubles are still here, but because he is numb inside and out, hollowed out of everything that made the world worthwhile). 

  
Dwight still has to wear a vest, Vince's arm still occasionally sports a shifting tattoo, Jordan still wears gloves (still strips them off, when she's his lone warden, and plays them just an inch over his skin, threatening, yearning, asking if she could still harm him even if he won't feel it, silently wondering if she wouldn't), and Haven still pretends its secrets are hidden even as blood runs down the streets and stains the sand of their shores.

  
( _The beaches of this town will run red with blood_ , Cole Glendower had threatened, and the Glendowers are still out there, forced to remain exiled from home and family, so maybe Cole's words were more prophetic than melodramatic.)

  
Days blur, nights run together, and twenty-seven years of this will still not be enough to atone for his sins.

  
_You're good_ , he remembers her telling him, and that is worst of all, because it's then that he thinks maybe it's best he probably killed her (and James and Duke and Howard and thirteen others) so she didn't have to see just how wrong she was about him.

  
(He wishes _he_ hadn't lived to see it either.)

* * *

  
As the resident scapegoat, he’s the first to be sent in after any potentially Troubled person. It takes Nathan so much longer to figure these cases out without Audrey there, seeing straight through to the heart of the problem and the soul of the person. The Guard claim to help, but since their form of ‘help’ mainly comes in the form of pointed accusations and muttered reminders that he’s the reason this is all still happening, Nathan usually just ignores them (he already knows just how much he’s to blame for).

  
“How can you be sure this is the place?” Jordan asks, her gaze as scornful (as wounded) as always. Sometimes he’s temped to ask why they keep leaving these Troubles for him to solve if they don’t trust him at all. He never does, though. Why bother asking questions to which you already know the answer?

  
(He deserves whatever happens to him. He’s the most expendable person in the whole of the two. Better, and right, that it be him who faces the danger rather than anyone else.)

  
“All the affected people have a link back to Elin Roberts.” Nathan’s already said all this, already outlined the investigation for the Teagues (his caretakers; his prison overseers). Much as Haven repeats its cycles, Nathan spends much of his days repeating (justifying) himself.

  
“And do you know what set her off?”

  
Instead of asking how many Troubles _she’s_ solved (solved, not manipulated or used for the Guard’s advantage), he just gives a short nod. “Her friend died in a car accident. Elin was driving the car.”

  
Jordan arches an eyebrow. “And when did this car accident happen?”

  
By the look in her eyes and the twist to her mouth, Nathan can see that she already knows the answer.

  
(All winding, repetitive roads of blame lead back to him.)

  
“During the meteor storm.” Nathan pushes past the accusation she’s drawing breath for. “The reason no one caught it is because at first the doctors thought it was a result of trauma. Elin must have figured out what was happening, though, because she pretty much became a recluse. It must be getting worse now—the effects are spreading farther and lasting longer.”

  
“Then you’d better get to it.”

  
Every time he’s given this imperious demand, he reactively wants to refuse. Wants to draw himself up and plant his feet and say _no_. 

  
But he never does.

  
The Troubled need Audrey, but he’s all these is so he owes it to them. It’s dangerous, confronting the Troubled, and better he take the risk than innocent cops or unreliable Guard-members. (And maybe, somewhere deep, he _hopes_ that this will be the day he pays the ultimate price for his crimes. Maybe this day will finally be the end of his sentence.)

  
“You’re not coming?” he asks.

  
“I’m already one sense down thanks to you.” Jordan tosses her head back. “Besides, I’d like to see you talk this one out before it can get to you.”

  
Before, just the thought of losing more of himself, of losing one of his few ways to interact with the world, would have given him pause. Before, Audrey would have been fearless, and he’d know that even if he was affected, she’d fix it. Before, he had a lot to lose.

  
Now…now, things are different.

  
Turning his back on Jordan and her partner, Nathan heads into the house without an instant’s hesitation.

* * *

  
Empty-handed, Nathan knocks twice on the front door before trying the knob.

  
“Leave!” a voice calls from just beyond the thick wood. “Trust me, you don’t want to talk to me.”

  
“Elin? My name is Nathan Wuornos. I’m here to help you.”

  
“No! No, don’t help me. Just go. Leave me alone.”

  
“Please, Elin. I know you think that you’ve made things safe by locking yourself away here, having your groceries delivered, cutting off all your friends and family. But it’s not working anymore. It’s getting worse.”

  
A long pause before she says, “I don’t believe you.”

  
“Joe Abbot, the man who delivers your supplies, lost his voice last week. Madge Sawyere, the woman who bakes your order of bread, was struck mute two days ago. And Ellie McPheron, your papergirl, woke up yesterday unable to speak. Elin, you need help. Please. Please let me in.”

  
There is no answer, no door magically opening to let him in. 

  
Every moment of every day, Nathan wishes Parker were here, with him, helping the Troubled, healing Haven, _seeing_ him. Now, facing this closed door, his yearning for her is so strong that it nearly chokes him. She would be inside already, getting Elin to open up, connecting with her, reassuring and commiserating and understanding.

  
“I know your friend died,” he says, softly. “And I know you feel like it was your fault—”

  
“It _was_ my fault! Maryse didn’t even _want_ to go out that day. She said it was too dangerous. But I was so worried about Jesse, my boyfriend—he wasn’t picking up his phone. I convinced Maryse to come with me, told her Jesse needed us…and when that lamppost fell, it only crushed the passenger side. I wasn’t even hurt, but Maryse… And it was all my fault!”

  
“Jesse? Jesse Bulloch?” Nathan thinks back on the case, remembers that name as one of the first to report to the ER with a sore throat that eventually led to mutism. “Where is he now?”

  
“I…I don’t know.” Elin’s voice is watery. “He came by, but…I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t… I don’t deserve him. Our friend is dead because of me.”

  
“You didn’t mean for it to happen. Elin, you were trying to do the right thing. You were worried—”

  
“No! Stop saying that! Everyone says that—that I didn’t mean it so it doesn’t matter, but it _does_. I killed my best friend because I was selfish. Because I didn’t want to go out there alone.”

  
Bright flares of light dance at the edges of Nathan’s vision, sign that he’s not breathing or at least not breathing right. Relying on muscle memory, Nathan coughs, coughs again, again, until the spots fade and the world steadies.

  
“Elin,” he tries to say, but no sound emerges from his throat.

  
“When they told me she was dead…” The doorknob rattle as if she’s gripping it with shaking hands. Nathan does his best to look harmless (imagines he succeeds pretty well considering he has no weapon, no real authority, no partner, and now no voice). “They were so nice. So considerate as they asked me questions. And I didn’t…I didn’t have an answer for them. I literally _couldn’t_ talk. Every time I tried, everything I said, it just sounded like excuses. I couldn’t talk because what could I possibly say? Maryse is dead. There’s no excuse at all good enough.”

  
Nathan clutches at the door and waits.

  
(In the flare of lights encroaching on the edges of his world, he sees a rain of fiery stones. A man torn into a thousand glittering pieces. A barn fractured and distorted.

  
He can hear his own voice, drowning in blood, pleading and commanding all at once.

  
He remembers Duke’s hands slipping away so that Nathan tilted toward the ground. Remembers the enemy he could never trust running straight into unimaginable danger. Remembers his friend vanishing into a supernatural construct coming apart at every possible and _im_ possible seam.

  
He remembers, and it hurts. It hurts so much he’s _glad_ he doesn’t have a voice to let it out.)

  
“Hello? Are you still there?”

  
At the note of fear in Elin’s voice, Nathan taps lightly at the door.

  
“Oh, no! No, not again!”

  
And the door opens.

  
Conscious of Jordan’s eyes on his back, Nathan nonetheless takes his time stepping into Elin’s home. The last thing he needs is to scare this poor woman into slamming the door again and leaving him permanently mute.

  
Elin’s a few years younger than him, he knows, but at the moment, she looks older, worn and stressed and guilty (and for all the lengths he goes to just to avoid his reflection, he still keeps coming face to face with it).

  
Coughing a few times, trying not to think about what damage he might be doing to his throat, he finally manages to get out a few words.

  
“I know it’s hard,” he rasps. “I know it seems impossible to move on, but—”

  
“If Maryse can’t, I shouldn’t either,” she says, stubbornly. Loyally. But it’s there. He can see it there, buried in her eyes: a spark of hope. Of longing. Of exhaustion and loneliness and desperation.

  
He’s felt that same spark. Hidden that same longing. Denied the extent of that endless loneliness.

  
“It is your fault,” he tells her, because that’s what she needs to hear. She needs someone else to say it so she doesn’t have to keep saying it to herself in the dark. “You were driving and you knew it was dangerous and you should have let her make her own choice. But that’s the thing, Elin—she _did_. Maryse _chose_ to go with you. She cared about Jesse too, and she got in that car with you of her own free will. It’s awful, and she’s never coming back. But you don’t really want to change what _you_ did that day. You want to change what _she_ chose to do.”

  
_Go_ , he’d told Duke. Implored him. Commanded him. _She needs you_.

  
But Duke Crocker, consummate survivor, ultimate conman, spotty friend—he never would have thrown himself into all-but-certain death for just anyone.

  
_You love her_ , Nathan had said aloud to Duke’s back, with only Howard’s evaporating body and meteors hurtling themselves to violent, catastrophic ends as witness to that long delayed revelation.

  
All that time spent distrusting Duke, suspecting him, watching him, accusing him…all that time and the answer had been staring him in the face all along.

  
Duke loved Audrey.

  
(No wonder Audrey had only kissed Nathan while hidden away in the Barn, a last gift given him out of friendship and grief and pity, but safely out of Duke’s sight so that it wouldn’t break _his_ heart.)

  
Nathan couldn’t be sorry for asking Duke to go after Audrey (or for shooting Howard and breaking the cycle and doing everything he could to save Parker), but every day he woke up _wishing_ that Duke had been smart enough to refuse him. Had stayed at _his_ side. Had chosen survival over a doomed chance that fizzled into nothing. (Wished, above all, that Duke hadn’t loved Audrey.)

  
When he hears crying, Nathan almost thinks it’s him, finally broken and penitent on the ground. But no, it’s Elin, instead, who folds and almost falls until he steps forward and catches her. It costs him nothing, to enfold her in an embrace, to catch her tears against his skin, to realize his voice is fully returned to him when he hears the soothing murmur he offers her. It costs him nothing because he has nothing left to give.

  
He tries to be grateful that at least no one died this Trouble, but can’t quite manage it.

  
(After all, he knows better than anyone that death is not always the worst outcome. Sometimes…sometimes you live.)

* * *

  
On the way back to the Herald to report to Vince, Nathan’s escort melts away. It’s not the first time; it won’t be the last. Nathan can’t help but wonder what they think they’re accomplishing. It’s not like they don’t all know what his Trouble is (of all the things Haven has denied him through the years, privacy was one of the first to go).

  
But maybe this isn’t about punishing him. Maybe it’s not about him at all. When you lose everything, when everything that makes your life worth living is ripped away from you, sometimes, Nathan knows, you just need an outlet, a way to take handfuls of that endless emptiness inside and transmute it into pain and anger on the outside. If anyone knows that, it’s Nathan.

  
So he doesn’t fight the group that materializes from the dusky shadows. Aside from protecting his eyes and ears, he lets them hit him where they will, feels the world tilt as he’s forced to the ground, lets the fists and the boots connect with a heavy thud that should make him nauseous but actually does nothing.

  
This group is mostly silent, though a few shake with ragged sobs they try to turn into angry roars. They lay into him quickly, as methodically as deep wells of emotion allow them to be, sharp and brutal and edged with more guilt than Nathan thinks he can possibly carry. But he can try. He _does_ try. Every day. Each hour. The Guard aren’t the ones who thought of sending him out against the Troubled, after all. That was all his idea (his responsibility), and it was Dave’s support that saw it accepted by Dwight and then by Vince.

  
With a few departing epithets, they disappear, the sound of their footsteps fading into the distance—a progression thankfully clearly audible. His hearing hasn’t been impaired, then, and his eyes still work, too, picking out the shape of his Guard escort returning now that he’s been reminded of his sins. It’s when he rolls to his knees and tries to stand that he recognizes where the most damage was done.

  
His arms won’t lift him. He can’t stand up straight, and when he tries to bend to get his feet under him, his body simply stops responding.

  
The Guard-members drag him the rest of the way to the Herald. Nathan tries not to look more than a minute or two ahead anymore, but he can’t deny that he’s hoping it’ll be Dave there to greet him. 

  
A sigh of startled relief slips from him when it is the older Teagues brother holding down the fort (he so seldom gets what he hopes for).

  
“What happened?” Dave demands before huffing in irritation. “Never mind. I can guess. All right, I’ve got him. You can go now.” 

  
When the men hesitate, Dave draws himself up. Nathan doesn’t have to look to know that Dave is transforming, as he can do at will, from amusing old newspaperman to the vaguely threatening presence of something old and unknowable.

  
“I may not be head of the Guard,” Dave says caustically, “but I’m the one who’s here now. I’ve got him. You can go.” 

  
The same words, but delivered differently, so commanding that soon Nathan sees the Herald whirl around him until Dave’s there, ink and musk and popcorn, a familiar combination of scents.

  
“Oh, Nathan,” Dave says. Clumsily, they make it to the backroom of the Herald where two cots are set up, one with a blanket and pillow, the other bare and tucked into a corner far from any exits.

  
“I’ll be okay,” Nathan says. Or tries to say. His voice comes out garbled.

  
“Oh, yeah? And are you going to say that all the way up to the minute they accidentally kill you during one of these beatings? Or when they purposely lynch you? Or maybe the moment when you slip a rope around your neck yourself?”

  
“I won’t do that.”

  
Dave regards him steadily. “Only because you think you don’t deserve a quick end.”

  
Nathan looks away (feels bare, exposed, vulnerable in a way he didn’t feel lying prone beneath the anger of a small mob).

  
Under the cover of handing him a wet washcloth, Dave gets close, lowers his voice to a hushed whisper. “I can still get you out of here. It’s not too late. I’ll distract them in the morning, you make it as many miles into the woods as you can, make for the cabin that—”

  
“Dave. Thanks, but my answer’s still no.”

  
“You’re crazy!” Dave snaps. “No one deserves this—especially not you. You only did what we all should have done—try to stop this cycle, stop using that poor girl as a band-aid.”

  
“What about the Troubles?” Nathan says over the sharp surge of pain that roars up inside him at this blatant mention of Parker.

  
“Well.” Busying himself with wringing out Nathan’s bloody washcloth, Dave shakes his head. “We would have figured something out.”

  
Silence falls, then, because there _is_ no other way. Not really. Once, Nathan thought there could be, and straining for it, _desperate_ for it, he just made everything worse. Best to accept the fact that this is the way things are. Best not to think on what could be (on what he would risk, would dare, if only Parker hadn’t been killed at his hand).

  
“Take a shower,” Dave tells him. “I’ll get you some clothes that are still in one piece.”

  
Nathan takes the kindness gratefully. It’s (one of the reasons) why he hoped it would be Dave here rather than Vince. Nowadays, taking a shower is the only time he gets a moment alone.

  
Before (before the Hunter, before the Barn, before Parker), he would have done a thorough inspection of each bruise and gash, tried to determine whether he’d broken any bones or injured anything internally. Now, after a cursory look to the patchwork map of layers of bruises over the place where scars _should_ mark the path of the three bullets Jordan planted inside him, Nathan forgets all about the injuries.

  
Ever since Ian Haskell took his Trouble for a few days, then broke every bone in his body and set it all to rights just to get in and out of a museum, Nathan’s had the idea that maybe his injuries are only as serious as he allows them to be. Anything he worries over, gets MRIs of, puts casts on, they linger and heal slowly (though quicker, even still, than a normal person’s injuries). But if he ignores a wound, shrugs it aside and keeps going, it disappears almost immediately with not a scar left to show where he was hurt. The only scars Nathan still bears are those collected during the years between Lucy Ripley and Audrey Parker.

  
(Besides, even if he did need medical attention, he doubts the Guard would be willing to take him to the hospital. His punishment is extensive and ever-evolving.)

  
Nathan avoids the mirror in the tiny bathroom as he steps into the shower, the faucet turned to cold. Only when there are two doors between him and anyone else does he let his breath turn shaky, unsteady; the cascade of water blurs due to the trembling that tremors through his body.

  
The beatings don’t bother him (if they help anyone else feel better, he’s more than glad to endure them). Solving Troubles at the risk of constant maiming or death is actually all he lives for anymore (the only thing left that he’s good for). But it’s when he’s alone, unwatched, that he gives into the true flaying of his soul. The self-castigation that would break him if anyone ever thought to inflict it on him. Since they haven’t, it’s up to him to parse out, yet again, the ever-growing measure of his sin.

  
“Audrey Parker,” he whispers to the water (the flash of blue eyes, blonde hair, red curls, steady hand on a gun, even the blue of a sweater contrasted against sun-warmed sand). “James Cogan.” (A son he’ll never know, a child he’ll never help, a man he struck down in a moment of desperation.) “Duke Crocker.” (The friend that could have been, all sneaky smirks and a hand to support him whenever he wasn’t looking to see it.) “Mitchell Frales, Kelly Goodall, Maria Lopez.” (Bodies pulled from the wreckage of cars and smoldering meteorites. “Heidi Asher. Zack Asher.” (Dead in the first Trouble activated by the seeming end of the world.)

  
On and on. Twelve names. Twelve lives snuffed out. 

  
Because of him.

  
Long after the water would have turned painfully cold if he were a normal man, Nathan huddles on the floor and lets the falling water brand each name (each indictment) into his soul.

* * *

  
“These Troubles are never going to stop,” Vince says behind him. Nathan tries not to betray how startled he is, both to find Vince in the room at all and to realize his Guard escort has once more conveniently vanished. “The Troubles will _always_ be here now—and that’s all thanks to you.”

  
Cautioning himself to calmness, Nathan looks back to the pictures of crystalline forms that were once innocent Havenites trying to enjoy a day on the beach. “We can’t just give up, Vince. There has to be something we can do.”

  
“I think you’ve done enough.” The note of finality in his voice is enough to make Nathan’s muscles clench up, or so he assumes from the way the papers in his hands crumple beneath the force of his grip.

  
He’s never fooled himself into thinking that Vince likes him, but lately (ever since his selfishness saw to Parker being disintegrated), Vince's antipathy has transformed into open enmity, his guarded watchfulness into a menacing rage. And now he’s alone with Nathan for the first time, standing between him and the exit—and his eyes are colder than Nathan’s ever seen them.

  
“The Troubles are still here because of you,” Vince says very calmly. _Frighteningly_ calmly.

  
“I know.”

  
“No, you don’t know. We’ve allowed you the bliss of ignorance for too long. But you should know what you’ve done—you should know as well as I do just how badly Max Hansen served this town…and how wrong Garland was to think he could mitigate some of your dangerous mistakes by taking you in.”

  
“I know what I did was wrong,” Nathan says through the roaring in his ears at the mention of his dead father (both of them), “but I am not my father.”

  
“No. You’re worse.”

  
“Vince—”

  
“Nathan Wuornos. That’s what Sarah said was the name of her baby’s father. Nathan Wuornos and he wasn’t even born yet, the only two things she ever revealed about you but more than enough.”

  
The room shrinks around them. Swirling memories of Max Hansen’s fists and the Chief’s solid back vanish entirely, subsumed by the flash of Sarah, all kind blue eyes and soft smiles and unhesitating touches. His greatest joy. His weakest moment (another sin he can’t quite bring himself to regret).

  
“She could have fought harder to stay,” Vince says, growing closer step by step, always so much taller, so much broader than Nathan remembers. “She could have found a way to stay. For her son. For Haven. For _me_. But she left so you would be born, and when Lucy came, she could have actually stayed away, outran the Barn and the storm and those of Crocker’s ilk. But she didn’t—because of James. Because of _you_.” There’s pain etched deep in the lines of Vince’s face, making him just as sympathetic as he is terrifying. “And then, just when we grow accustomed to what she has to do to save all of us—just when I get used to saying goodbye to her for the greater good—there you are to screw it up forever.”

  
Anger rises, sharp and tasting of copper. “Parker didn’t deserve to be the sacrificial lamb for this town!” he snaps.

  
A mistake. He forgot. He forgot that he’s not allowed to have any excuse (any valid reason) for what he did. He forgot that he’s the villain of this story, not the hero.

  
Vince quickly reminds him by shoving him back and by loosing an accusation Nathan’s heard before.

  
“The Troubles are here because of you!”

  
Nathan can’t feel Vince slam his back into a wall, but he feels the accusation down to the very marrow of his bones.

  
He stood in a field once, just before his life fell apart (not for the first time; not for the last time; just one time in a long line of transformative moments, but no less painful for all that). Stood in a field while the Rev and Cole Glendower drew battle-lines in blood and his dad stood in the gap as a willing martyr (always so much more willing to be a good parent in absenteeism). Stood there and heard the Rev’s accusation like a deafening thunderclap.

  
Heard his father’s answering silence like an earthquake (and how fitting is that, when the earth shook moments later and ensured his dad’s silence forevermore?).

  
_Your son is the reason the Troubles are still here._

  
In the mouth of two or three witnesses, he thinks, and in that moment, he does give up. How can he possibly think that he can help at all when everything going wrong in this town is on his head? How can he possibly think that finding every bit of information about Troubles and Barns and a bright soul come back and ripped away and come back and ripped away ad infinitum, storing it away for a day nearly three decades from now, would ever help when it is _his_ trigger finger that extinguished that bright, pure soul forever?

  
Better, maybe, just to die now, saving one or two, than to live condemning all (and he envies Duke more in this moment than in any other).

  
But then the door flies open and Dave hurries in with news and Nathan’s world falls apart and remakes itself all over again.

  
“Duke’s alive!” Dave shouts. “Duke’s alive! He’s alive and in Boston and on his way—”

  
It takes Nathan a second to realize that the reason Dave’s fallen abruptly silence is because Vince is still crushing him against the wall, his hand fisted in Nathan’s shirt.

  
Dave blinks, blinks again, then moves. “Vince! Let him go! This isn’t what we agreed on.”

  
“Maybe it’s time for certain agreements to be renegotiated,” Vince growls.

  
In one of those strange transitions Nathan still can’t follow after all these years, Dave’s eyes go hard, his mouth sets, and the air crackles with electricity Nathan doesn’t need nerve endings to sense. “And you know what the consequences will be of breaking that promise.”

  
Nathan doesn’t care about their squabbling anymore, though.

  
“Did you say Duke’s alive?” he demands. “Duke Crocker?”

  
Quick as the blink of an eye, Dave transitions back into his more common façade. “You know any other Dukes?”

  
Stepping away from Nathan, Vince narrows his eyes. “How do you know it’s really Duke? It could be a trick.”

  
“It’s Duke,” Dave says with a finality he doesn’t explain. “He appeared in an aquarium tank in Boston—and according to him, only seconds had passed since he leaped after Audrey.”

  
Nathan can’t help but flinch. It’s been so long since he’s heard _her_ name (his friend; his partner; his ally—his _victim_ ).

  
But…if Duke’s alive…she could be too.

  
James could be alive.

  
(Nathan’s crimes may not be as insurmountable as he thought.)

  
“He ended up in a hospital,” Dave’s saying, “but apparently a young woman found him and got him out. A _Troubled_ young woman. She claims she’s been hearing the last conversations from inside the Barn since the night of the Hunter.”

  
“A strange Trouble,” Vince muses, but Nathan talks right over him.

  
“She can hear Audrey? What happened to her? Does she know where Parker’s been spit out?”

  
Dave hesitates. “No. But we know the Barn plays with time, so if Duke just showed up now, maybe she hasn’t landed yet.”

  
“Or maybe she’s dead.” Vince’s glare impacts Nathan far more than a fist would.

  
“This woman could be the key to finding Parker,” Nathan says (he can’t think about her being dead, not now that there’s hope; not when he came so close to giving up; not as long as he’s still alive).

  
“Maybe so,” Vince says, drawing himself up. “But if so, it’ll be for us to find out. You won’t be allowed anywhere near it.”

  
Nathan and Dave both protest (one much more vehemently than the other), but Vince shuts them both down.

  
“You can’t be _trusted_ with her,” Vince hisses. “Who’s to say you won’t just get her killed again.”

  
The barb strikes deep, a lash layered atop the scourging he’s self-inflicted and the flaying heaped on him by the town. Nathan staggers at the pain (the truth) of it, and before he can recover, he is locked in the backroom, a criminal shut away lest he cause more harm to his surviving victims.


	2. Chapter 2

Nathan dreams of blue eyes and a shoulder tucked against him no matter that he can’t feel it. He dreams of a teasing smile and mischievous words, of a gun held in a steady hand on his behalf and a firm voice raised in his defense. He dreams of a hand stretched to him in friendship, a badge offered in partnership, a hug given to cement their alliance.

He dreams of red curls and a smile freely granted even before transient names were exchanged. He dreams of trust and openness, of confidences exchanged and comfort sought and accepted. He dreams of a finger tracing his face and slow, light kisses, of gentle patience and soft sighs.

He dreams of Parker and love and a world where Duke wasn’t in Haven. He dreams of what was, what he wants, what he destroyed.

Nathan hates sleeping more than anything else in the world because every night he dreams—and every morning he wakes to brutal reality.

* * *

The door to the Herald’s backroom remains locked all day, enforced solitude not even broken to offer a basic meal or a bottle of water (he hopes the Teagues never try to keep a pet). Nathan paces and tries to pick the lock (that was always Parker’s province, though, not his); he sorts and organizes the files that Vince and Dave have let go since Nathan left for the police department; he even finds some paper and tries to write down all the questions he has for Duke and his Troubled rescuer (he runs out of paper before he runs out of questions).

The one thing he doesn’t do (can _not_ do if he doesn’t want to fly apart in a million numb, hollow pieces) is think about Parker alive.

Parker lost somewhere.

Parker locked away in some hospital.

Parker hurt and alone.

Parker alive but forever out of his reach, still just as trapped, as locked into an endless, torturous cycle as ever.

He doesn’t think of it.

(It is all he can think of.)

* * *

When the door finally opens, it is only Jordan there and the disappointment is so overwhelming that Nathan actually staggers at the force of it.

“Where’s Duke?” he demands. “What’s going on? Have we found Parker yet?”

“Crocker doesn’t want to see you,” Jordan says, voice filled with gleeful satisfaction. “However, he did identify those crystal forms as people struck by lightning.”

“Lightning. Weather related?” Nathan blinks. “Marion Caldwell?”

“Marion Brauer now.” She gestures him to his feet. “So come on, time for you to earn your keep.”

“What? No, we don’t have time for this right now. We should be sending out Parker’s description to every police department, hospital—”

“No. Not you. Audrey can’t help us anymore, remember?”

Nathan shakes his head, frustrated and impatient (and maybe just a bit scared). “Parker helps the Troubled, Barn or no Barn. If you really want to help Haven, you need to find Parker.”

“You _wanted_ this!” Jordan spits. Her hand hovers over his chest, his neck, his face, bare millimeters separating them. “You demanded the right to help the Troubled. You brought this mess down on us, ruined _everything_ because you were blinded by your feelings for _Audrey_. Or maybe,” she says, slower, softer, her ungloved fingers a hair’s breadth from his face, “maybe just blinded by _feeling_. By having a woman you could actually feel. After all, you didn’t care to distinguish between Audrey Parker and Sarah Vernon. I guess the personality doesn’t really matter so long as _you_ can feel. But what about the rest of us? What relief do we get?”

He only knows that her fingers actually finally (after all this time, all the long moments of temptation she allowed herself) touch him when her eyes widen, wet and big and so, _so_ surprised. When her mouth trembles and her whole body sways toward him and her breath ghosts close, all mint and tea and bacon from her breakfast.

There is a part of Nathan that thinks he deserves this, to be a vessel for Jordan, to pay for his sins by giving her back this simple ( _profound_ ) gift. She has been bitter and manipulative and desperate, but how can he blame her when he knows what it is to be so completely isolated? If his feelings for Parker were motivated just because of her immunity, then he deserves to be used in turn for his own.

But they weren’t. Her touch was never what it was all about. And Parker is _Parker_ , whether she’s the blonde Audrey or the red-headed Sarah. She’s good and brave and teasing and kind and compassionate. And she looks at him and she _sees_ him and that is worth more than any amount of working nerve endings.

And Jordan’s fingers are resting where Sarah’s played. Her eyes are fixed on his mouth where Audrey gave him a last parting kiss. Her touch is nothing to him and her kiss would be a betrayal.

And she doesn’t understand at all.

“Not a mess,” he says quietly. He wraps his fingers around her sleeved wrist and moves her hand away. “They’re _lives_.”

Silence. A blink. Incomprehension.

(Rage tastes like oil, thick and viscous and overpowering.)

“They’re lives, Jordan, and I know the name of everyone. I know who their families are and how they died and—”

“You.”

Nathan steps back.

“You,” she says again, her vulnerabilities tucked away as easily as her incomprehension, covered over and buried beneath blame and bitterness and grief. “ _You’re_ the reason they all died, so you’re crazy if you think we’re going to let you loose to wreak more havoc. But if you’re so upset about these _lives_ you’ve ruined, then I suggest you do what _you_ promised and help everyone you condemned to endless Troubles.”

(Rage is bitter and thick as poison when he swallows it back, washes it down with his guilt.)

And Nathan remembers, yet again, that there’s no appeal he can ever make next to the magnitude of his sins.

* * *

Conrad was one of the few people in this town (before Parker came) who ever spoke to Nathan, who always nodded a hello even as he made sure there was enough distance between them. Nathan had once thought that war did to Conrad what the Troubles did to him (a perimeter no one could breach, a barrier necessary to keep everyone else safe from the disasters he could so easily cause). The difference was that Conrad had been able to reach across that distance and bring over the woman he loved. Out of everyone in the world, Marion was the only one ever allowed to touch him (maybe because she had reached back toward him and refused to let go).

Now, as his breath frosts the air and Nathan’s perspective changes to alert him he’s sunk to the floor, he stares at Conrad’s still, blue form and wonders how he’s going to get back up tonight when he has to add Conrad’s name to his list.

“You have to let go,” Nathan says, and almost chokes on his own hypocrisy (on his anguish). How dare he preach on sensible decisions when he’s guilty of holding on at the expense of this whole town? (How can he even attempt to compare this situation to his own when Conrad’s indisputably dead and Parker…Parker _can’t_ be?)

“This isn’t love,” he hears himself say, and he never knew he was such a liar. He never realized before just how easy it is to tell others what to do (and how hard it is to apply that same advice to his own life).

“He’s gone,” he tells the heartbroken Marion, and knows that if he wasn’t already on his knees, this would have been enough to drive him down.

She’s gone.

Parker’s gone.

Even if she and James are somehow still alive, scattered across the world like lost treasure without a treasure map, he will never be allowed near them. They will never _want_ him near them.

They’re lost to him. Now. Forever.

Marion throws herself into his arms, trusting him to hold her up, allowing him his pitiful efforts to console her, maybe the last person in town who doesn’t blame him in some way for her personal tragedy.

His breath no longer taints the air in physical form. 

The Troubles are still here.

Nathan feels cold.

* * *

It’s the third instance of bodies turned to husks, simulacrums of life that crumble to ash when touched. Not only is Nathan’s list getting painfully longer, but Nathan also hates how similar he feels to these lifelike corpses (a body on the outside, nothing but ash on the inside). Jordan and his usual escort lead him to a coffeeshop, and Nathan tries to brace himself for a roomful of bodies, half a dozen new names to memorize, lives to learn about, crimes to try (uselessly) to atone for.

“Is _that_ the witness?” Jordan suddenly snaps, jarring Nathan from his preoccupation. The world jolts as his guards pull him to an abrupt halt.

Nathan scans the busy crime-scene: cops he knows by name but who don’t seem to see him, their eyes sliding right past him (a kindness that probably makes his chest ache). Dwight standing with a cluster of other people, a short woman Nathan doesn’t recognize at all. Stan keeping busybodies away. And…

Nathan hears his breath catch in his throat. He knows that form, that profile, that deceptively casual stance.

He’s alive.

“Get him out of here,” Jordan commands.

“Duke!” Nathan gets the name out only once before one of his guards claps a hand over his mouth. They’re dragging him away, Duke receding into the distance, obscured by obstacles, before he can do more than glance over his shoulder in the direction of Nathan’s shout.

Duke’s alive.

Nathan heard them say it, of course, and he’d even believed it, _planned_ on it, but… It’s different, somehow, so much more real now that he’s _seen_ him, hair too long, clothing too tattered, façade too worn to be completely believable anymore. 

He’s alive.

He’s here.

Nathan didn’t kill him.

The last time Nathan saw Duke, he sent him running straight into a supernatural barn that disintegrated into fractured pieces (and of all the times for Duke to listen to him, of course he’d chosen then). All this time, Nathan’s locked all thoughts, all memories, of Duke away in a tiny box because every one of them was edged in that final image of Duke flinging himself into destruction at his command.

Now, though…now it all comes rushing back. Duke who caught him when Jordan’s bullets drove him to the ground. Duke who _didn’t_ betray Parker, who had the chance to turn his back on her but didn’t. Duke who for all his faults is not the man Nathan thought he was.

(Duke who loves Audrey. Duke whom Audrey loves.)

And if Duke is there, so intent and protective…then that woman with him, the witness Jordan doesn’t want him talking to, must be the Troubled woman who can hear Audrey’s voice.

Nathan doesn’t need to feel to be overwhelmed by envy. Of all the useless Troubles, of all the important Troubles, he would trade any and all of them for that young woman’s.

To hear Parker’s voice again…

To be able to imagine her any way but scared, lost, alone, locked away (dead and gone and vanished forever).

Nathan _wants_ with a strength he’s never allowed himself before. 

Duke is alive and Audrey might be ( _must_ be) and all is not lost.

Except the Guard won’t let him anywhere near Duke (or is it Duke who won’t let Nathan near?). 

They lock him away again until, suddenly, they’re there, frantic and urgent, dragging him to the Founders Day parade, pushing him toward a fireman who lost his partner.

It's not hard to find the words to say, even though the acrid stench of burning fabric and leather and flesh is distracting. Nathan knows better than most that sometimes dying is the mercy and survival is the real punishment. This poor fireman never meant to hurt anyone (they never do, he knows, firmly _not_ thinking of Max Hansen’s grin and a pyromaniac’s madness gleaming in eyes directed Parker’s way), but that doesn’t matter to the fireman’s guilt (or to his), not when he’s alone and can see those lives (that list of names) staring him down.

Duke’s alive, Audrey is (must be) alive, but that doesn’t bring everyone back. It doesn’t undo any of his crimes. That list that haunts him, he knows, is always, _always_ going to be there.

* * *

Grumbling about the uselessness of the Guard, Dave bandages Nathan’s burned wrists. He thinks about telling the older man that it really doesn’t matter but decides to remain quiet. Dave needs to do something to make himself feel like he’s helping and this is harmless. Besides, it’s nice, though he doesn’t deserve it, to feel like _someone_ cares about him.

“Nathan?” Duke’s voice is weighted with a heavy surprise. As if he thought Nathan was gone. As if he’d expected him to run away from Haven and never look back (much the same way Nathan had once expected the same of _him_ ).

In a daze, Nathan turns, peers past the Guard escort hastily converging all around him, and catches a glimpse of graying hair falling out of a messy ponytail, flint eyes (missing their usual twinkle), sharp chin. Just an instant, then Nathan’s being hauled away while Dwight catches at Duke’s arm.

“Duke!” Nathan calls back. He’s not quite sure why. If he can’t get past the Guard between them, he doesn’t know why he thinks that Duke can. But then, Duke Crocker’s always been curiously skilled at accomplishing the improbable.

“Nathan! Nathan!”

Then he’s gone, the Guard and the Herald and who knows how many locked doors standing between them.

That slight glimpse doesn’t really change anything, doesn’t help him get any closer to Parker or to stopping the Troubles, but somehow, it makes Nathan feel better. (It has been so long since he’s heard his name used as anything but an accusation and indictment and warning all in one.)

In some way, no matter how small, it gives him hope.

(He’s not the only survivor left after all.)

* * *

For the next few days, Nathan waits. Every time either of the doors in the Herald opens, he looks up expecting Duke. Any sound, he holds his breath thinking Duke is picking the lock, come to save him—or at least to confront him and blame him for Audrey (for the Trouble Duke has never wanted) face to face. But the locks remain stubbornly in place, the doors open only to exchange his guards or bring him another case folder about a body drained of blood, and Duke doesn’t come.

He shouldn’t have expected it, Nathan tell himself angrily. Of course Duke won’t come—Nathan may or may not be responsible for the death of the woman he loves, and he’s absolutely responsible for Duke losing six months of his life and still having to deal with his Trouble. Besides, it’s not like he and Duke have ever been friends; even at their best, they were little more than uneasy allies. Why _should_ Duke come to see him? That surprise in his voice when he called his name was probably just shock that the Guard didn’t keep Nathan locked up at all times.

Nathan’s trying (and failing, as per usual) to figure out this newest blood-draining Trouble with what little information they’ve allowed him when the door opens behind him. Expecting Vince’s cold glare or Jordan’s crawling fingers (every day he’s locked away, she grows more bold, less constrained), he's surprised to see Dave instead. Nathan’s usual guards are there, but they don’t follow Dave into the room.

“I’m sorry, Nathan,” Dave begins, but Nathan brushes aside the apology.

“Duke?” he asks in a low voice.

Dave casts a sidelong glance to the Guard. “His brother unexpectedly came to town. Between that and Jennifer, he’s been kept pretty busy.”

“Jennifer? The Troubled woman who can hear Audrey? What has she heard? What’s—”

“Nathan, that’s not important just now. I tried to talk him out of it, but Vince won’t listen. He’s—”

“Ready?” The sound of Vince’s voice, all innocent expectation, casts a pall over the room.

“I’m sorry,” Dave says again. Then he gestures mockingly to Vince and says, “Don’t keep him out too late. Be a shame to have to discipline yourself over breaking your own imposed curfew.”

“What’s going on?” Nathan asks.

“We’re going on a trip,” Vince says. “Out of town.”

“But this case—”

“Jordan’s volunteered to help Dwight with it. I think they have it well in hand—you’re hardly indispensable, Nathan. Now come on. We have quite a drive ahead of us.”

Dave steps between them. “Remember your promise, brother. Bring him back safe and sound.”  
“I won’t touch him,” Vince says (it doesn’t sound like a reassurance), “but as to ‘safe and sound…’ Well, that all depends on what we find, doesn’t it?”

“Where are we going?” He hasn’t even finished the question before Nathan realizes he really doesn’t care. “Have you found Audrey yet? Did you expand the search to hospitals outside the East Coast? Has Jennifer heard anything to give us a clue about where she’ll turn up?”

“We’re going to figure that out right now.” Vince’s smile cruel, cold, but brittle around the edges. “Now come on.”

And though Vince carries no gun and has made no overt threats, Nathan has no choice but to follow him, unresisting and uncomplaining.

For answers, Nathan is beginning to think, he’d destroy another hundred Barns.

* * *

The drive is silent (oppressive). The walk into the building is weighted and too long (like a nightmare, everything stretching endlessly around him). The realization of where they are hits Nathan with the force of a sledgehammer.

A morgue.

Vince has brought him to a morgue for answers. Answers about where Parker’s ended up.

Nathan stops dead in the middle of the fluorescent hallway.

“Vince,” he says (his voice breaks).

For a wonder, Vince actually comes to a stop. The cold look in his eyes slips, just for an instant, into something worse: grief-stricken pity. “It _might_ not be her,” he says with absolutely no conviction. “It’s a Jane Doe matching her description. It could be anyone.”

“It’s not her.” Nathan hears his own statement and realizes the truth of it. It’s enough to let him take another step. “She’s not dead. You said Jennifer hears her.”

Vince says nothing else, just falls into step with him. They traverse the rest of the too-long hallways in silence (this silence more like a breath held in suspense, the inhale before a scream).

“Nathan,” Vince blurts out just before they go through the last door. “If it is her…”

“It’s not.”

“But if it is…” Vince’s eyes lock on Nathan’s, and for the first time since a Barn appeared on a hillside, Nathan can see past the head of the Guard to the man who went fishing with the Chief, who offered Nathan a job and a place, who’s laughed with him and drank with him. He sees an old man, bowed under the weight of too much loss, too many tribulations, too few victories. 

“As many times as I’ve said goodbye to her,” Vince says, “I’ve always known she’d be back. That’s the only way I’ve been able to live with any of this, to know that she will continue, will always be there. I just…I don’t think I can bear it if she’s really gone for good.”

It's strange, _so_ strange, to hear these things not as an accusation but as a confidence. To be addressed not as the root of all their problems but as someone who can completely understand. Nathan suddenly feels more real than he has in almost seven months.

“Do you want me to go in alone?” he asks. It’s the only gift he can give (any words he might offer would only ring hollow).

“No,” Vince says slowly. “No, I…I need to see for myself.”

It’s almost surreal, the moment when the sheet is pulled away from the body. Noise seems to disappear entirely, leaving Nathan with only a few senses, all of them inclined to deceive him.

For just a moment, Nathan’s eyes see Audrey lying there, cold and empty and pale. For just an instant, he’d swear he smells coffee and paper and gunpowder. For just a heartbeat, it is Parker dead in front of him and Nathan’s world contracts down to nothing.

Then he blinks and it’s not Parker at all. It’s a woman with too-dark hair, too sharp a nose, too pronounced a chin, too tall, too bony.

It’s not Parker.

The room shifts around Nathan until he throws out a hand to clasp a nearby table for balance. Some pressure propels him out of the room, down the hallways (Vince, some part of him realizes), out of the building (his hand on Nathan’s shoulder or back), and to their car. Only when Nathan can see the sun-warmed metal, presumably solid under his numb hands, does he feel the world snap back into place around him.

“It wasn’t her,” he says, mostly just to hear it said out loud (to reassure himself another sense hasn’t been stolen away). “Parker’s still alive.”

Nodding, Vince looks away. “I’m sorry, Nathan.”

Nathan blinks at him (at the unfamiliar phrase). “What?”

“I’m sorry. It’s always been easier to blame the name Sarah gave before she left than to see you as a person. Garland insisted on adopting you even after Dave and I told him about James’s father. He made me promise not to blame a kid for the future, but…I’ve broken that promise your entire life.” Turning to meet his eyes, Vince says, “But how can I blame anyone else for loving her? How can I hate you for falling under her spell when we both know we’re not the first ones?”

“The difference is that you were strong enough to let her go.”

“Or maybe I just wasn’t brave enough to fight for her.” Vince shrugs. “Either way, you were…you are enough for her to actually love you back in return. And if I’m being completely honest, that’s what I hated you for more than anything.”

“Parker cares about me,” Nathan admits (tries not to remember lies and long silences and someone else always chosen before him), “but Duke’s the one she loves. He’s the one she chose.”

(Over and over and over again.)

Vince squints at him. “I don’t know what happened between her and Duke, but I know who she took into the Barn with her. I know who’s dangerous enough to pull the trigger on a centuries-old cycle.”

“For all the good it did.” Reminded of everything he needs to make amends for, Nathan pushes himself off the car. They don’t have time for this. The Troubles never rest, and neither can he.

Before he can open the car door, Vince’s phone rings. Chafing to be back in Haven (far away from this morgue and the possibility within), Nathan waits impatiently for the call to end. But whatever it is, it must be important because as soon as Vince closes the phone, he squares his shoulders.

“Jennifer’s been hearing Audrey,” he says. “ _New_ conversations. Things that don’t totally make sense. She and Duke believe that Audrey’s still in the Barn, trapped in the moment of its destruction.”

“So she hasn’t landed yet?” Nathan could swear the world suddenly becomes brighter.

“Nathan, wait. Have…have you heard what Jennifer’s been hearing? What Audrey and Howard said in their final conversation?”

“This may surprise you,” Nathan says dryly, “but I’m not exactly first in line on the gossip chain.”

“There’s a way to end the Troubles forever.”

“What?” Nathan only just barely stops himself from grabbing hold of Vince and _shaking_ the answers out of him.

“Audrey has to kill the person she loves.”

One blink. Two. Three.

The sun still lights the world. Cars still pass on the road just outside the parking lot. Nathan assumes he’s still breathing since he remains upright and conscious.

Duke. He’s only just accepted that Duke’s alive, and now, so quickly, he might still end up standing over his grave.

Or will he?

“The person she loves,” Nathan repeats. “Any of them?”

Vince stares. “What?”

“Audrey loves a lot more than one person. Does she have to kill the one she loves the most or…or just _anyone_?”

“We assumed it’s the person she loves most.” Vince takes a deep breath. “That’s why James ran from her. Arla told him that Lucy had tried to kill him to end the Troubles. But Jennifer says that in the Barn he claimed that Audrey didn’t love him enough for it to work because she didn’t know him. He asked her who she loved now. And that’s when she started saying her goodbyes.”

Of course it was. Parker’s always ready and willing to sacrifice herself, but other people? No, she’d never stand for that. (For the blink of an eye, Nathan even wonders if he could actually bring himself to hate her for that, for making him live with her repeated sacrifices.) It’s no wonder this cycle has continued as long as it has even with such an easy solution waiting in the wings.

“She does love him.”

Vince hesitates. “Who?”

“James,” he grits. “She does love him. She doesn’t have to know him to love him. He’s her son.”

“And yours,” Vince says neutrally (impassiveness cloaking ravenous curiosity, easing envy).

“When we find Audrey,” Nathan says with finality, “you know what we need to do.”

“Nathan…”

“She has to kill me.”

Vince says nothing. He tries to pass off his silence as uncertainty, but Nathan sees it for what it really is: agreement. (There’s a reason Vince broke the Guard’s injunction to keep him in the dark, after all, and Nathan’s willing to bet it’s for exactly this result.)

For the first time, Nathan feels hope.

(Finally, _finally_ , there is an end in sight.)

* * *

They’ve been back in Haven only long enough to reach the Herald when Jordan meets them with a strange gleam in her eyes.

“There’s a kid missing,” she says. “Maybe more than one related to this case.”

A shadow seems to pass over the sun.

A kid. Not just a kid. A little kid, three tiny children from a preschool. Vince melts away, no help at all (an uneasy alliance doesn’t make them friends, as Nathan well knows), leaving Nathan alone with a strangely cold Jordan.

“Are you all right?” he asks her (any distraction, even one that probably equates with poking a wild bear, is preferable to where his mind insists on wandering).

Jordan glares at him. “Oh, I’m fine. Just peachy, really, with no end to the Troubles in sight. Why? Are you planning on doing anything _else_ to make my life better?”

“You seem…” He tilts his head, but the change in angle doesn’t help to clarify her. Before, even when she shot him, or when she taunts him with barbs and tempts herself with touches, he’s always understood her. She’s hurt, lonely, isolated. Desperate for all of that to change and fixated on an end to her Trouble as a way to erase all her pain and trauma. For all she hurts him, he knows that hurt is all she knows how to inflict because it’s all she feels inside. But now…

“Hollow,” he finally settles on. “You seem hollow. Numb.”

“Well, you’d know better than anyone what that feels like,” she sneers. “Morally hollow. Physically numb. And empty of any sort of plan to fix this mess you made.”

“Jordan.” Carefully, he pulls in a breath. “I could have a plan. If we just find Audrey—”

“Audrey!” She nearly snarls as she lunges at him, her gloved hands twisted in his shirt. “Always _Audrey_! Did anyone ever think that maybe she’s the _cause_ of all this?”

His pity evaporates. Nathan shakes his head and knocks her hands away. “Parker is the only solution to the Troubles.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s more than one way to end a Trouble.”

“We can help people come to terms with their Troubles, but that’s not a permanent solution.”

“Maybe I have my own solution in mind.” Jordan’s eyes lock on her hands as she drags them up his chest. She’s too close and he assumes from the look on her face that she’s touching his skin (he imagines his skin crawling, a physical scream he can’t hear). “Did you know that Duke’s brother is in town?”

“Which one?”

“Does it matter? A Crocker’s solution is more permanent than anything your precious Audrey ever managed.”

Reaching up to wrap his hand around her bare wrist, Nathan tries to meet her gaze (to reach past the shell wrapped around her vulnerable, hurting self). “Jordan. No. You can’t be considering that. There’s always hope.”

The preoccupied mist clears from her eyes as she shoves him back. “Don’t you dare judge me, you hypocrite! You were willing to kill to save your precious partner—and trust me, most Troubled people would willingly choose death over cursing their entire families to live forever in our personal hells.”

“And the ones who choose life rather than giving up?” he demands. “Will you respect that choice or will you blackmail them into doing your will like you did that little girl, Ginger? And what about the Crockers? You’d condemn _them_ to living forever in their personal hell to save those few who do take the easy way out? To making their hells all the worse for putting innocent blood on their hands?”

“Since when do you care about the Crockers? Any of them? And no one who’s Troubled is innocent.” A quick flash of pain, of guilt, ghosts across her face, raw and aching. For the first time, Nathan would actually _willingly_ reach out and touch her (try to convey a comfort he doesn’t feel), but she backs away, locked behind an exterior every bit as cruel as it is fragile.

“Let’s go,” she says coldly. “Or are you not interested in finding these kids?”

Returned to his proper place (alone, isolated, used only so long as he is useful and set aside otherwise), Nathan has no choice but to let it go (never something he’s been good at).

Better that way, though, he thinks, because soon he will have to let his entire life go (take the easy way out to save others, to save Parker, but above all, to save himself).

* * *

Nathan feels like he’s in his own personal hell during the next few hours, but it has nothing to do with his Trouble and everything to do with the son he just barely allows himself to remember. The little kids freezing to death while caught up in something so much bigger than themselves. A would-be father whose denial threatens lives and futures and the woman he loves.

“I have a son,” he tells Braer, the Troubled father, and almost chokes on the words. It makes it real. It makes it inescapable. It brings it all roaring up from the shallow grave he’s hidden it within. 

Even in the midst of danger, with all these kids’ lives depending on him, he is assaulted by a flood of images, half memory, half imaginative guesswork.

Sarah (always Parker, sometimes red-headed, sometimes blonde, but always so open and kind and mischievous). Her smile and her hands so willingly bridging the gap between them. Her kisses and the softness of her skin and her absolute, unswerving (emboldening, strengthening, intimidating) trust in him. 

Sarah ( _Parker_ , competent and compassionate and brave and so very lonely) left alone facing a town he could only warn her about. Left alone but pregnant, strong and already in love with her baby ( _his_ baby, abandoned so definitively by his selfish father). Her heart breaking when she has to give her baby away (another sacrifice this vicious town demanded of her).

And James. James Cogan (who could have been James Wuornos), growing up with parents (replacements, Nathan can’t help but think, though he knows, he _knows_ , how unfair that is), still going off to look for his birthmother and finding Lucy Ripley instead of Sarah Vernon. Loving her anyway, being pulled into a world of Troubles and danger and endless inevitable loss.

His family…but not really. Not at all, Nathan thinks. Sarah chose him only because she hadn’t met Duke. James had a father and looked only for his birthmother, not his biological father. They’re not Nathan’s. They’ll never be his. The only thing that binds him to them will be that he, too, sacrifices himself for Haven.

There are no working nerve-endings in his body, but Nathan can feel the stickiness of blood on his hands, thick and so pungent it burns in his nostrils.

He killed his son just like he killed his birthfather (and stood by and let his dad die right in front of him). 

“We have to admit that it’s our fault,” he tells Braer as the man stares at his dying wife and the fading children. 

It’s his fault. He was trying to save Parker, yes, but his intentions don’t matter compared to what he actually did.

He killed James. Duke was thrust out, they’ll be able to pull Parker out somehow, but his son? His son needed the Barn to survive and Nathan shot that all to hell.

“It’s my fault,” he whispers, and expects the sky to start falling around him again, the earth to crack under his feet, his own body to burst into flame like it almost did what feels like a million years ago (back when he was beginning to let himself hope, to think that maybe, just maybe, someone _he_ loved would love him back and choose _him_ ).

None of that happens, of course. Instead, his punishment is to endure. To survive. To stand in a world that stays in one piece while the bodies of his loved ones are strewn in his wake.

The douen disappear. The children are released to be wrapped in blankets and taken home to their parents. Carmen wraps her arms around Braer’s sobbing shoulders. 

A happy ending—but no baby for the Brocks.

(No son come back to wipe the largest name off his list.)

But a moment later, Nathan’s world does end up shaking. Rocked off its axis when Jordan puts her phone back in her pocket and says, “Jennifer knows where Audrey’s coming out. Vince wants you there.”

Parker. James is beyond his reach, but he can still save Parker (Sarah; Lucy; Audrey; all the future incarnations she will never have to be molded into). It’s time to bring Parker home.

And then…then it will all be over.

* * *

On its own, the hillside might look like the scene on a postcard. With the line of heavily armed Guard-members ringing it, it looks more like a battlefield, all of them prepared to go to war. Nathan, though, sees only salvation in the two figures standing at the peak. 

A young short woman he knows to be Jennifer Mason—and Duke.

This hillside is, despite all appearances to the contrary, his salvation.

“Duke!” he calls. He tries to move forward, but unsurprisingly is brought to a quick, probably painful halt.

“Let him up,” Vince says authoritatively. “This is what we need him for.”

Nathan meets his eyes and shares a quick nod with him. (He hopes Parker will look at him, will see him, before she turns yet again to Duke.)

Duke meets him halfway, his movements so quick and purposeful that Nathan braces himself for the punch and is taken completely unawares by the hug Duke pulls him into, so tight all Nathan can smell is brine and metal and alcohol.

“Nathan!” Duke pulls back and looks him over (Nathan was once used to these quick surveys, someone checking him over for wounds, but it’s so unfamiliar now that he feels awkward). “I’ve been trying to see you ever since I realized you were still here! Are you okay?”

“Are _you_?” Nathan asks.

“Nathan…” Duke looks over his shoulder to the makeshift soldiers arrayed behind them. “What’s the plan here? If you need me to create a diversion so you can make a break for it—”

“I’m exactly where I need to be.” Nathan consciously puts a hand on Duke’s arm, hoping it’s a reassuring touch (knowing it’s probably goodbye). “Duke, I’m sorry I sent you into that Barn—”

“No, don’t be.” Duke’s smile is the same as ever, only now instead of smugness, Nathan can see the reassurance in it. The willingness to be a friend. The plea to depend on him and give him a reason to stay, an expectation to meet and exceed. (He wonders if these things were always there and he never saw them, or if Audrey brought them out in Duke.) “It’s something I needed to do. And look, no harm done, right? It’s you I’m worried about right now. Everyone seems ready to crucify you, and if what Jennifer heard is true, you know they’re going to be expecting—”

“I know,” Nathan cuts him off. He’s exhausted suddenly, so mentally tired when he realizes that they haven’t filled Duke in on the plan. Why would they want Duke to think _he’ll_ be expected to lay down his life for this town? Why wouldn’t they tell him that Nathan is the one who will take this last bullet for the Troubles? “It’s okay, Duke, really. Being here is my idea.”

(He hopes Parker will smile at him, one last time.)

Duke narrows his eyes, but before he can say anything, Jennifer calls his name.

“Duke! Duke, I can open the door now!”

Nathan sticks close to Duke, lets himself be carried alone in his wake, and the Guard fall back, Vince and Dave standing halfway between, Dwight holding Jordan back—and then they all disappear. Nathan’s entire focus gravitates to the door that materializes into being at the touch of Jennifer’s hand.

(He hopes Parker won’t hate him, before the end; he hopes she doesn’t hate him already.)

When she flings the door open, there is an alien wilderness on the other side. Swirling colors, greens and browns and yellows that shift and spiral and mutate, fragmenting and reforming. Time-streams collapsing around them? Whole worlds just out of reach? Something even further outside his comprehension?

Who knows. It doesn’t matter.

There is another door across that nebulous chasm. A bar of light with (or is he imagining it?) the silhouette of a slender figure standing on the threshold.

“Audrey!” He calls the name out before he can remind himself it is Duke who should be calling. 

But Duke’s steadying Jennifer, distracted and distant, and Nathan can’t keep the name he clutches even closer than he does his list from winging free.

“Audrey!”

(He hopes she’ll touch him, one last time, one touch to prove she can eventually forgive him.)

His feet are edging over the threshold, inching into the coalescing kaleidoscope, but Duke’s hand on his shoulder prevents him from straining farther toward that figure (a picture of his life, Nathan figures, Duke between him and the ever-unreachable Audrey).

“Audrey!” he calls again (it’s been so long since he’s let himself even _think_ her name). “Audrey!”

(Above all, he hopes that Parker is the last thing he sees, the last touch he knows, the last thought he has.)

The figure moves. Shifts. Elongates, then shrinks, then vanishes, no longer backlit by the open doorway.

“Audrey!” he yells, frantic.

And the world breaks into a million pieces.


	3. Chapter 3

The next moments are a chaotic blur punctuated by sharp moments of painful relief, like eye-stabbing flashes of light against smoky darkness. 

He remembers devastation that swept over him in a wave when he picked himself up to see that the door had vanished.

He remembers how arrested everything became when he caught sight of that familiar form prone on the ground. Dressed differently than Parker, maybe, with different hair and her eyes looking darker under heavy makeup—but that’s all peripheral next to the blazing recognition in his soul as he meets Parker’s eyes. Alive. Awake. _Seeing_ him. As he helps her sit up. Alive. Warm. _Here_.

Where was Duke, then? Nathan doesn’t know. Later, he can’t remember anything but Audrey. Audrey alive and well and here and looking at him without a single hint of anger or blame or disappointment in her eyes.

She looks at him the way she used to, back when Haven still kept its many secrets and the sun was golden and her smile was easy. Back when she sought him out and chose him and confided in him and trusted him (before Duke). She looks at him as if she could and _would_ spend lifetimes looking at him and figuring him out and cajoling him out of isolation.

(She looks at him like Sarah did, once, so briefly.)

He remembers a kind of reckless daring filling him, here in the last few moments of his life. His hand was already on her arm, but he slid it up, up, to her cheek, to her hair, to the slender line of her neck.

She let him (or did she?).

He remembers _wanting_ , remembers tilting forward, as if she would grant him a kiss hello in the same way she’d granted him one as goodbye.

And he remembers Jordan stepping forward to demand his death. Vince’s silence, Duke’s protests (or just questions? maybe he just wanted to know the plan; it’s not that Nathan could blame him for wanting him dead after Nathan elbowed his way in between Duke and his reunion with Audrey), and the way not a single one of the Guard protested when he took Jordan’s gun from her ungloved hand.

Parker didn’t smile at him this time, he thinks abstractly, but she looked at him so openly and didn’t flinch from his touch and for last moments on earth, this could have been a lot worse.

Nathan wraps her hand around the gun (feels the weight and heft of it through her touch, feels the chill nip of the air between her fingers) and has to look down to make sure it’s resting against his heart.

“I’m ready, Audrey,” he says.

And then it gets worse.

(Her silence should have clued him in. The tilt of her head should have been a giveaway. The way she didn’t look disappointed in him should have been proof. He should have _known_.)

Parker tilts her head, her hand limp around the gun. “Who’s Audrey?” she asks, and that’s when total chaos erupts.

(Her eyes weren’t open on him; they were blank.)

“He has to die!” Jordan exclaims over the surprised clamor.

(She didn’t welcome his touch; she tolerated it much the same way he tolerates Jordan’s.)

“Let’s all just take a minute here,” Dwight yells, but for once he is ignored by everyone.

(He did kill Audrey. She’s still Parker, of course, that doesn’t change, but just as he will never see Sarah again, Audrey’s now gone from him forever too.)

“Nathan, you may want to think about running,” Duke hisses as he pushes Jennifer safely behind him.

(All she ever wanted was to be Audrey Parker, and he took that away from her. James and Audrey, both dead at his hand.)

“I’m not killing anyone,” Parker says after the gunshot she fires into the air brings a startled silence.

(She doesn’t love him, not even a little bit. Once again, he is useless. Valueless. Nothing more than a reminder to ensure no one forgets the sins of reaching too high, wanting too much, holding on too tightly.)

Nathan remains slumped on his knees at the peak of a hill he thought would be his salvation.

(He should have known that was impossible.)

He should have known better than to hope.

* * *

Another moment or two, and Nathan ends up behind Parker and Duke, the two of them already partnered together. He should be grateful, but instead he is only jealous. She will love Duke again, choose him again, and Duke will be the one they force her to kill and she will be the one broken by the loss of the person she loves and Nathan will yet again be left to survive and endure the unendurable.

Somehow, Dwight and Jordan pull him back into Guard custody. Somehow, Audrey ( _Lexie_ , another name, another face, still _Parker_ , fighting to save the helpless, the guilty Troubled with their good intentions and bloody hands) and Duke manage to finagle time for negotiation and planning. And somehow (probably by virtue of sheer repetition), Nathan is once again dragged away, banned from being included in the actual decisions (and why not, when the last time he made a decision, it ended in death?).

The Guard-members beat him on the way back to the Herald, a visceral punishment for a disappointment too great for the already burdened Haven to bear. Nathan welcomes the blows, hoping one will drive him into blissful unconsciousness. He is not so lucky. The sound of flesh against flesh buffets him, but he is numb as always. Untouched and untouchable.

They lock him back in the Herald, the closest thing (now that Audrey is permanently gone) to a home anymore.

It’s worse than the beating. Worse than a gun aimed at his chest in the hand of the woman he loves. Worse than anything they’ve ever done to him. They gave him hope (purpose) and then snatched it away (he cannot believe his own gall, to have ever thought he could _save_ instead of destroy). They tore open the box he kept locked so tightly over all his memories (the blue of her eyes was the key; the curve of her lips was the lockpick; the sound of her voice was the sledgehammer; the feel of her chilled skin beneath his chapped fingers was the dynamite that obliterated every trace of that protective box) and now he is defenseless, drowning under the deluge.

Audrey’s elbow in his hand as he pulled her from her teetering car.

Audrey’s smile when she teased him and pulled him along after her.

Her protectiveness and her trust when she asked his help to stop a serial killer.

Her tentative hope when his Trouble vanished so temporarily.

Her lips when she stepped so close to him and brushed a kiss over his cheek.

Her kiss and her touch and her love offered so freely, so unconditionally, when her hair was red and her uniform white and her tools a stethoscope and kindness rather than a gun and compassion.

If those were the only memories, the punishment would still be too cruel, but at least he might have been able to withstand and endure and pretend he could fight again. But there’s more, other memories like bitter salt tainting the water and rubbing the wounds raw.

Audrey’s silence when he begged her not to give up. Her back every time she turned away from him. Her hand reached out to touch—not in comfort, not even in friendship, but to manipulate, to restrain, to control. Her cold anger whenever he tried to save her, the way she always shut him out and called for Duke to come stand at her side.

It is the juxtaposition of them both that destroys him, even still, even now that Audrey’s gone. The way she first reached out, then turned away. The way she kissed him, then fled to Duke’s arms. The way she gave him hope, then crushed it with a smile and a murmured _Partners, right?_. 

She didn’t choose him, didn’t love him the way he so desperately longed for her to…but she didn’t abandon him either, didn’t cut him loose to mourn his losses and move on.

Caught in between, trapped between her and the town, her and Duke, her and the Barn.

Nathan slumps down on the floor, not entirely purposely, his back propped up against his bare cot, and tries _not_ to remember. Tries to forget as much as Parker has.

But he can’t. This is his lot in life: to stand alone and to remember what everyone else has already moved on from. This is his future: to remember and to never ever be able to atone.

* * *

He has no idea how much time has passed when the door finally opens. With no time even to make his body uncurl into a standing position, he can only stare as Audrey ( _Lexie_ ) is politely but firmly escorted inside.

She looks around the cramped room, composed, eyes alert, chin up. Then she sees him and he can tell she didn’t expect him to be there by the way her eyes widen and her hand flies up to play with a lock of her hair—long and brown and streaked with reminders of Audrey’s hair color.

“Wow, hey there,” she says. He wishes he were still numb enough not to notice the backwards step she takes away from him.

She’s afraid of him. (And why not, after he touched her and crowded her and put a gun in her hands?)

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, surprised at how hoarse his voice is. “And neither will they. Don’t worry, you’re safe here.”

“Yeah, I’m having a hard time believing that,” she says. “Just today, I found out that my life wasn’t real, my workplace was some kind of trick, and the only way out was to jump through some kind of mindscape freakier than anything I ever saw while on drugs. And let’s not forget that army of guns pointed my way, the strange things happening in this town, and the fact that everyone apparently wants me to kill you. _Safe_ is not what I would use to describe this situation.”

One part of Nathan can’t help but lap up every piece of information she gives him, every hint of what she’s been through, what she’s thinking, _who_ she is (the differences between Lexie and Sarah and Audrey; the similarities of Parker). The other part of him (the bigger part, if he’s honest) is distracted by the drawl coating her words, the turns of phrase so different from Audrey’s, the nervous mannerism she uses to try to calm herself.

It was one thing to see Sarah in the context of a Haven he didn’t really know in a life he knew would never be his. It’s something else entirely to see _Lexie_ amidst familiarity, to see her and recognize her and be surprised by her and to know that there is no going back to Audrey.

This is who she is now: Lexie DeWitt, bartender.

And, most importantly, not his. Not his friend. Not his partner. Not even his ally. 

“Hello in there? You still with me?”

Nathan blinks and the mirage of Audrey fades away. “Haven’s a strange place,” he says, “but you don’t have to be afraid here.”

Her nod is more thoughtful than agreeable. “ _You_ might need to be afraid,” she says. “No one out there seems to like you very much.”

Scoffing, he makes himself stand up (slowly, so slowly because he doesn’t want fearless Parker to be afraid of him) and move to sit on the cot. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been a popular guy.”

When she says nothing, he chances another look. Her mouth is drawn tight, her eyes narrowed, as she stares at him. Or maybe just in his direction.

“What happened to you?” she finally asks, and if he wasn’t trying his hardest to appear sane and normal, he’d laugh until even _his_ sides hurt.

“I’m fine,” he says. “The real question is why you’re in here instead of out there with them.”

“You know, I may not be a nurse, but I _can_ bandage up a few wounds. That’s one useful skill you pick up after your first couple barfights.”

Barfights. Sarcasm. Abrasive attitude. It’s like Audrey playing Jordan. Like the parts of Parker that always pushed him away merged with the elements of a lifestyle he’s never understood or been drawn to.

The Barn, he thinks, has a particularly vindictive sense of irony.

He didn’t notice Aud— _Lexie_ —approaching, so he startles to see her out of the corner of his eye, hand outstretched to his arm where a bruise peeks out from beneath the sleeve.

“Sorry.” She makes a face. “It’s just…someone really should look at those.”

“I’m fine,” he says again (imagines his Bronco at their backs and a bullet-graze on his arm). “I can’t feel it.”

“Oh, tough guy, huh?”

Nathan sucks in a sharp breath.

Her fingers graze his wrist.

He’s real. He’s alive. He’s still here, living and breathing and hurting (not a ghost, after all).

“Sorry,” she says again, snatching her hands away.

For a moment, it’s Audrey standing here. Audrey with her hand between them and an apology splashed over her features. Audrey wanting to reach him but not wanting to push him.

“So much for _fine_ ,” she says with a smirk, raw around the edges where Audrey would have been teasing, and it’s Lexie here with him again.

He’s saved from having to make a reply when the door slams open.

“Nathan,” Duke says. He pauses to give Lexie a smile and a nod before turning back to Nathan. “A word?”

* * *

Nathan sits at his old desk, void of all his personal belongings (a picture of the Chief in a drawer, the vials of scents that calmed him whenever the world seemed too far away, his ever-present bag of notebooks and pens and press badge) but otherwise unchanged. Well, unchanged aside from Duke perched on the edge with his arms crossed over his chest in a half-hearted effort to contain his irritation.

“This, _this_ , was your plan, Nathan? Well, at least now we know why Audrey was the one who usually came up with the plans—yours suck.”

“ _This_ was the way to save everybody,” Nathan says calmly, “and it still is.”

“Nice try. Except that’s Lexie in there and she has no idea who you are.”

Nathan fiddles with the edge of his desk, scored with a black mark where his Sharpie once got away from him. It gives him something to look at besides Duke and whatever thoughts his expression reveals.

“We don’t know that the person she kills has to be her true love. I know…I know you love her, too, Duke—and I know that she loves you. But that’s why this is perfect. If she kills me, the Troubles are gone and you both can be—”

“You’re an idiot,” Duke says in a perfectly even tone. “Even saying I believe that about this magical solution working for just anyone—which I don’t, FYI—but saying I do… Audrey’s never going to shoot you. Never in a million years.”

“To save all the Troubled? To save _you_?”

“By _killing_ you?” Duke hisses. On the other side of the room, the others (Dave, Vince, Dwight, Jennifer, Jordan, and Nathan’s usual escort) look over before once more pretending they’re not just waiting around for Duke. “You think Audrey’s just going to be fine and dandy after losing you?”

Nathan takes a deep breath. “She’s done it before. A couple times, actually. Besides, I know you’ll be there for her.”

Duke lets out a loud snort. “Nathan, forgive me for saying this, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You weren’t actually, you know, _alive_ to see what she’s like without you. She _needs_ you.”

“And she loves _you_ ,” Nathan says with a note of finality (even his masochism has a limit and this conversation has overshot that mark by a mile). “But you’re right about one thing—that’s not Audrey anymore, and Lexie doesn’t care about either of us. Not yet.”

Duke’s shoulders sag as he runs his hands down his face. “Yeah, about that… I might have talked the Guard into sticking with your original plan. They apparently _like_ bad plans.”

“What?”

“They might have only agreed on a few conditions. With a couple tweaks.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s becoming more and more obvious with every word you say.” Rolling his eyes, Duke leans close so he can lower his voice. “Look, Nathan, they were going to kill you. Jordan had her gun out and her hand on the door before Dwight could convince her to hear me out. I didn’t have a lot of options left that keeps you alive.” He hesitates, then says, very sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. If I can die ending the Troubles forever, that might make all this worth it.”

“I would have volunteered myself,” Duke says as if Nathan didn’t speak (maybe he is a ghost after all, only tied to his former life by the touches of his medium), “but in case this doesn’t work, they don’t want to let go of the Crocker curse.”

Nathan studies Duke. This close, he can see the threads of silver in his hair, the lines around his eyes, the tiredness weighing him down. “I’m sorry,” he offers (all he has to give).

“Yeah, whatever. Look, the thing is, I convinced them that since we have proof both Sarah and Audrey fell for you, we can make Lexie fall for you too.”

Nathan squints, but Duke talks over him.

“That gives us time to find another way. Or at least a way to get you out of town and far away from the Guard.”

“You…” Nathan lays his hands flat over the empty desk and studies the place where his skin becomes wood. “You really think this could work?”

“I still know some people. Dangerous people. And not that I’m admitting any past crimes here, but I think I could smuggle you out by sea if nothing—”

“No, I mean…you think Lexie really could care about me enough to bring an end to all this?”

“Nathan…” Duke sighs. “I think I’d rather put my faith in you and Audrey than in some creepy Barn.”

“And you don’t mind? If the Guard tries to push me and Lexie together…well, I know how painful that could be to witness.”

“Let’s focus on what’s most important here.” Duke moves as if to clasp Nathan’s shoulder before drawing back (strangely, Nathan almost feels disappointed; maybe the friendly touch would have erased the memory of this last beating). “Jennifer may be able to help us find another way. All we need is a bit of time. So, stall.”

Nathan nods, though inwardly, he’s panicking. If they’re relying on him trying to charm Lexie into caring about him, they’re going to have nothing _but_ time.

“Don’t give up, Nate,” Duke says softly. “As much as you wanted Audrey to fight her fate—that’s how much she’d want you to fight yours.”

“But she didn’t fight,” Nathan says (the first time he’s let himself even think it since the Barn fragmented apart and left him bleeding out). “She walked into that Barn knowing she wasn’t going to walk out again. This time, it’s my turn.”

“Nathan—”

“I hate to interrupt,” Dwight says suddenly, “but I just got word of a homicide down at _The Rope Loft_. If we want Lexie to start where Audrey left off, I’d say this is the perfect opportunity.”

Nathan’s halfway to his feet when Jordan moves to stand between him and the door. “Not you,” she says. “We can’t risk you dying until it counts. Duke, you go with Lexie.”

“Hey!” Duke says. “If you want Lexie to fall for Nathan, you need to let him go with her. That’s how it worked before, both of them working cases together.”

“Actually,” Dwight says, “Audrey worked more cases with you, Duke. Nathan, once this case is solved, we’ll bring you down to the station. You can interview her—say it’s a story for the paper.”

“I don’t even work for the Herald anymore.”

“You don’t work for Haven PD either,” Dwight says with his characteristic bluntness. “Right now, you work for the Guard and you’re more valuable to us alive than dead.”

“For now,” Jordan interjects acidly.

“Duke, get Lexie. I’ll take you both to _The Rope Loft_. Jordan, follow along in case they need backup. Vince, you’ll watch Nathan?”

Vince nods, Dave doesn’t protest, and as easily as that, Nathan’s once more relegated back to his (not _his_ anymore) empty desk. On the sidelines. Out of sight, out of mind.

Lexie looks at him curiously as she’s led out of the backroom, following Duke outside, but Nathan can’t bring himself to meet her eyes.

Sarah only chose him because she hadn’t met Duke yet and because she didn’t know anyone else in town. Audrey didn’t choose him at all (though she led him to believe she could, she might, she was tempted). And Lexie? Lexie’s Parker and she won’t care about him at all if he can’t help the Troubled.

His end has never seemed so far away.

* * *

Surprisingly, it is Dwight who comes to drive him to the station. Maybe to fill up the dead silence growing between them, he tells Nathan about the body-snatching Trouble. A particularly brutal introduction to the Troubles for Lexie, Nathan thinks.

“She’s fine,” Dwight offers almost begrudgingly. “Duke’s Trouble ended up saving the day.”

Nathan’s pretty sure that unlike everyone else in Haven, he will never get used to the Crocker Trouble. Of all the cruel twists provided by their curses, he doesn’t think he’s seen any crueler than that inflicted by having such a lethal solution to the Troubles. But then, what does he know? He’s banking all his hopes on Parker having to kill _him_ to end everything once and for all. Not so different in the end (but still unspeakably cruel).

“Dwight.” Nathan catches the police chief’s arm just outside the station. “I need to talk to you away from the Guard.”

“Look, Nathan, I don’t like this plan either, but until we get a better one—”

“What? No. I don’t have a problem with the plan.”

“No, of course you don’t.” Dwight shakes his head. “That would make my life easier.”

Nathan narrows his eyes before deciding it doesn’t matter. Without knowing when he’ll get another chance to talk to the chief, he can’t afford to waste this one. “You have to stop benching me. Parker’s never going to care about me if I’m not out there helping the Troubles. _That’s_ what matters to her above all, and keeping me away from that isn’t going to help anything.”

“It’s safer for us if you’re not out on the front lines,” Dwight says as if he’s reading off a script.

“I don’t know exactly how you think this is going to go,” Nathan says, “but locking me up to ‘protect’ me and letting me out just to…what? Wine and dine her? That’s never going to work.”

“You never know. Maybe that’s exactly the kind of thing Lexie DeWitt goes for.”

Nathan regards him for a long moment. “She’s still Parker. Her name, her memories, those change, but inside she’s still the same person.”

With a heavy sigh, Dwight gives him a short nod. “All right. I’ll talk to Vince, see about getting you back out there—as a reporter, Nathan, not a detective.”

It’s been months since Nathan’s seen Dwight except from a distance; Nathan almost forgot why he’s okay with that. Dwight was the first person to believe in him (besides Audrey, but then, her belief in him stopped at the badge, didn’t it?), the first person to give him a chance to prove himself. He freely offered Nathan what Garland had withheld for years.

And Nathan let him down. Betrayed him in a desperate bid to save Parker. Of everyone who turned on Nathan so quickly, the one he can blame the least is Dwight.

“It’s nothing against you,” Dwight says, perhaps the closest to gentle Nathan’s ever heard him apart from when he’s talking to children. “In any other town, any other place, I’d even say what you did was the right thing. But this is Haven and it’s _not_ like any other place. What you did hurt a lot of people and I can’t make them forget that.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“I know. Which is why I’ll give you what you’re asking for.”

“Thank you.”

Dwight’s eyes slam into him with palpable force. “Don’t thank me. All I’m doing is getting you killed that much faster.”

“Well, like you said—any other town.” Nathan gives him a condoning nod. “But this is Haven.”

Dwight smiles grimly. “Lucky us.”

* * *

Someone has dug up his old camera bag. Nathan does his best not to think about the Guard rifling through his belongings, ransacking his house and denting his Bronco, and instead sets about refamiliarizing himself with the contents of the bag. The notepad inside still contains remnants of half-written articles, a few discarded beginnings to the stories he wrote on Audrey Parker’s lasting contribution to Haven.

In the end, maybe it’s fitting that he start out with Lexie the same way he began with Audrey.

He’s sitting at his old desk staring at Audrey’s old desk when Duke brings Lexie in. She’s wearing some of Audrey’s clothes and she’s used Audrey’s shampoo (Nathan is frozen solid for a full minute, mesmerized by the familiar smells that bring up devastatingly familiar scent-memories), but she’s very obviously _not_ Audrey. The way she walks, the way she lets Duke show the way without once trying to bluff her way into figuring it out herself, and of course, the lock of hair she twirls between her fingers.

“Nathan! Good morning!” Nathan’s taken aback by Duke’s overly exuberant greeting until he realizes that throwing Parker at someone else, even for a good cause, can’t be easy for him. A bit of overcompensation is much better than the punch he probably wants to land instead. “Lexie, you’ve met Nathan Wuornos, right?”

“The tough guy,” she says with a smirk that falls a bit flat. “I remember.”

“You solved your first Trouble,” he says. As hard as he has to fight to sound normal, he’s kind of proud of how nonchalant he manages to be.

“What? Are you going to ask her a few questions about it?” Duke’s grin is almost crazed, his eyes unusually intense. “Great! This? This is a good idea. The two of you, talking together, you know, getting some things out in the open.”

“I don’t know.” Lexie shrugs. “Shrinks have never really been my thing. Besides, I didn’t really do that much, _remember_?”

She and Duke exchange looks that wouldn’t pass for casual even to a blind man. Nathan’s far from blind, though he does look away on the thin pretext of rearranging his pen and notepad. One day, he thinks. One day, one Trouble, and already Duke and Aud—Lexie are close enough to speak whole conversations without words.

If he wants her to care enough about him for a bullet to fix everything, he’d better get busy.

“All right,” Duke says a moment later. “I’m going to get us some breakfast. You want anything, Nathan?”

Nathan blinks. “Anything what?”

“Breakfast. Food. You know…” Duke trails off. Nathan feels, suddenly, incredibly self-conscious. He avoids mirrors as much as possible, but he’s sure he’s lost weight on the feed-him-only-if-you-happen-to-think-of-it diet the Guard have him on. “You know what?” Duke says slowly. “I’m really hungry. I’ll bring a lot. Have fun, you two.”

“Does it feel like he’s trying to set us up?” Lexie asks. She’s grinning, though, so Nathan supposes she’s not serious. Instead of sitting at her own desk, she moves to plop down on the couch, curling her legs underneath her and drawing some of her hair forward to play with.

“You don’t look too scared,” he says when he can’t take her silent perusal any longer. “Not ready to run for the hills yet?”

“Someone told me I didn’t have to be afraid.” She gestures to his bag’s contents spread out before him. “I thought you were a cop. That doesn’t look like a badge and gun.”

“I’m…suspended indefinitely. For now, I’m going to be doing some freelance work for the Haven Herald.”

“A writer, huh?” She sounds amused. “Some women really dig that mysterious, brooding poet stuff, you know.”

“I’m not a poet,” he says shortly. “Or very mysterious.”

Only after he says it does he wince at his own abruptness. The Guard probably would have wanted him to play up that angle, to try to be attractive and alluring. But Nathan doesn’t know how to pretend to be anything but what he is—and even if he could, he wouldn’t try to trick Lexie into caring for him. Besides, he might not know exactly why Audrey liked him, but he’s pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with poetry.

“Oookay,” Lexie arches her brows. “So…what story are you writing?”

“You probably know that everyone thinks you’re Audrey Parker,” he says. “So I’m going to write a story about her getting amnesia so people don’t keep pressuring you to be someone else.”

Lexie snorts indelicately. “Amnesia? No one will believe that.”

Nathan tries not to wince. “You’d be surprised.”

After a long moment (he can only imagine what she must be thinking), she says, “So…what do you want to know? Name? You already know that. Age? Not sure I want to divulge that information. Birthplace? That’s a funny story actually—”

“What? No, that’s…” With a breath to brace himself, Nathan gets up and abandons the protection (psychological if nothing else) of the desk. “I know we’re asking a lot of you. More than most people would be willing to give.”

“But you think I can?” She’s trying to sound bold, but he’s heard this note of vulnerability before. He knows what it means when Parker can’t quite meet his gaze.

“I know you can,” he says unwaveringly, and just like before (with Sarah, with Audrey), Lexie gravitates to that surety. Stares at him and drinks in every word, and even if her orphan heart won’t let her believe it, he can see how much she _wants_ to. And for the first time in months, in an eternity, he feels _seen_. Heard. He feels real, his ghostlike body solidifying beneath the weight of her trust.

“You help people,” he says. “No matter where you came from or what your name is, you always help. And you never, not once, let this town down.”

“It’s hard to believe that,” she admits, then immediately rolls her eyes, breaking the moment. “Like everything else in this town.”

Nathan steps back to give her (to give himself) space. “It’s true. But, anyway, you don’t have to answer any questions. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You don’t owe this town anything, and if you deserve anything, it’s a bit of privacy.”

He’s surprised her. For once, she has no sarcastic retort or brash assertion. Even beneath the heavy makeup, her eyes are so clear. So blue. So familiar that his whole being aches.

Duke’s arrival is a relief, giving him the opportunity to stand back and remind himself that this isn’t Audrey (that he doesn’t have enough days left to him to even dare _think_ about the possibility her open gaze seems to be hinting at).

“Black coffee for Lexie,” Duke takes a long second to hand her the cup, probably communicating nonverbally again. Fighting back memories of his own countless coffee deliveries to a different version of this woman, Nathan looks away and is taken aback when Duke sets a paper cup in his hand. “Black for you too—don’t worry, I made sure yours was lukewarm.”

That’s barely sunk in when Duke hands him a Styrofoam container of pancakes drenched in syrup and Nathan is startled all over again.

How long has it been since he’s smelled maple syrup and golden batter? How many days, weeks, months, since someone has cared enough not to give him a too-hot drink?

His eyes dart to Lexie as he remembers just who else cared this much, and then back to Duke as he realizes that Duke actually does care. He’s not thinking about punching Nathan; he’s bringing him the first true kindness Nathan has received in months.

The pancakes are the best thing he’s ever tasted. It’s all he can focus on for a while, really, each swallow of syrup chasing back the lump threatening to choke him. But as the food disappears, he grows conscious of the pointed looks Duke keeps sending his way. As soon as Nathan meets his eyes, Duke tilts his head toward Lexie.

Just like that, Nathan’s mind goes blank and doesn’t start up again until Duke drags him out into a quiet corner of the bullpen (Nathan pretends he’s not aware of every eye turned his way). “What are you doing?” Duke demands. “I know the longer we can stall, the longer you get to live, but seriously, Nate? You have to at least make an _attempt_.”

“I am!” he protests. All the defensiveness he used to feel in Duke’s presence comes roaring back in. He already _knows_ that Parker loves Duke; does he really have to rub Nathan’s face in it? “I’m not worried about dying. I just…I’m not very good at all… _this_.”

Duke’s eyebrows nearly reach his hair. “ _This_? You mean interacting with the fairer sex?”

Glaring, Nathan folds his arms over his chest (a defensive move he knows Duke will recognize, which only makes him more self-conscious). “I don’t… Trapped in an office she doesn’t remember—what am I _supposed_ to do? It’s not like there’s a lot of options here. And anyway, Parker’s always been more into action than romance, hasn’t she?”

“Hopeless,” Duke mutters into his hands. “Actually, literally hopeless.”

“Stop!” Nathan snaps. “Just stop making fun of me. I…I don’t know _why_ Parker started caring about me when she first came to town. I don’t know what made her see me when no one else ever did. And I _certainly_ don’t know what made her fall in love with you, so forgive me if I take a few minutes to try and figure—”

“Nathan.” There’s something very soft in Duke’s voice, something protective in the set of his eyes and the way his hand falls on Nathan’s shoulder (slowly, so Nathan can see it coming). “There are so many things wrong with what you just said. First off, I’m not making fun of you, I swear. Secondly, I know why Audrey attached herself to you so quickly—and Sarah for that matter, and Lexie too if she’d had the chance. You care. All right? You care and you believe in people. You believe in them so strongly that they can believe it themselves. Trust me, that’s more amazing than you know—I may have been on the wrong end of your belief, but it still made me want to rise to the occasion. And thirdly—and most importantly—Audrey loves _you_.”

“I know.” Nathan nods to cover how off-balance he feels (he’s paralyzed by the contradictory urges to apologize, to reassure, to run). “That’s the only reason killing me will end the Troubles. But loving someone and being _in_ love with them are very different.”

Duke stares at him as his hand falls from Nathan’s shoulder. “I take it back. I don’t know why anyone would be attracted to someone so _dense_.”

Nathan narrows his eyes but doesn’t get the chance to reply (probably a good thing; he’s never handled charged moments with Duke very well). Lexie leans out of the office with an impatient expression.

“Hey! Are we actually here for a reason or can I go out and try to find some clothes that aren’t so _beige_?”

“Yeah. Yeah, absolutely we’re doing something!” Duke calls out over Nathan’s shoulder. “Nathan was going to interview you, right? Right. Go on, Nathan, don’t let me keep you from your very important conversation there.”

With no other options (and no particular desire to keep talking to the mercurial smuggler), Nathan lets himself be pushed back into the office that smells overwhelmingly of Audrey, all lilies and lilacs and coffee. He ignores the (not entirely sincere, he’s sure) thumb’s up Duke gives him and tries not to panic when the door closes behind him.

“I don’t bite, you know,” Lexie says. “Most of the time.”

It’s just Parker, he reminds himself. Under all the makeup and nose ring, the new memories and brash persona, it’s Parker. Strong and lonely and compassionate and insecure. He knows her. He can talk to her.

“So, Lexie,” the name sticks on his tongue, “what do you want to know?”

“For starters, why everyone wants you dead. What is the plan here exactly? And do I get paid for any of this, because if I’m staying, then I’ve got to eat.”

“You get paid,” Nathan says. “Dwight will see to it. And the plan is for you to help the Troubled.”

“And the reason you’re Mr. Popular?”

She’s playing with her hair again. Nathan decides that he hates the mannerism as much as he likes it (it calms her even as it distracts him). This is Parker, but it’s also Lexie—a version of her that doesn’t hate him or blame him or avoid him. A version he hasn’t failed yet. Is it so wrong to want to keep that for just a bit longer? To let himself pretend, if only for a few days, that _more_ is possible?

But then, that’s what he told himself with Sarah. That’s the kind of reasoning he used to justify their picnic and the kisses and the hours that led to a son he loves so fiercely despite the fact that they’ve only spoken once. This is exactly the kind of thinking that led to him pulling the trigger in a field outside a supernatural Barn.

“They want me dead because I deserve it,” he says (it’s honesty and it hurts every bit as much as it eases). “The Troubles are here because of me. Because I don’t know how to let go.”

“Nathan…” At the soft note adorning his name (a tone he never thought to hear from her again), his eyes leap to her. But she’s looking behind him, at the name stitched into his bag. “Wuor-nose,” she pronounces (badly), and then looks at him. Friendly. Kindly. (But not tenderly). “It can’t be that bad. Didn’t someone say these Troubles have been here forever? That can’t all be your fault.”

“Enough of it is,” he says shortly.

He’s never been so grateful for an interruption as when the door bursts open to Dwight.

“We’ve got Trouble,” he says. “Tater was found downtown dead—maybe frozen, maybe petrified. Lexie, you willing to go check it out?”

Nathan isn’t surprised at all when Lexie nods and heads out the door. He is surprised (though he shouldn’t be) when Dwight stops him from following. “You’ll be involved,” he promises, “just not out on the front lines. Stay here and figure out your next step.”

“Next step with what?”

Dwight sighs. “Your next step to make Lexie fall for you. And, Nathan? Make it good. Jordan’s not the only Guard-member getting impatient, and I think we both know that they’re not above taking matters into their own hands.”


	4. Chapter 4

Nathan looks up from the story he’s cobbled together (writing’s never been a passion, but it _was_ his job for years so he plans on taking this seriously whether they intend him to or not) when he hears Duke’s voice. He and Aud—Lexie are back, strolling into the station together, Duke smiling and relieved, Lexie casting him a smile though there’s a furrow between her brows Nathan got used to seeing on Audrey when she was preoccupied with thoughts she didn’t want to share.

The minute they turn toward the office ( _her_ office, not his anymore, but probably hers still), Nathan feels awkward and unsure. He stands and moves out from the desk, then takes a step back toward the seat, then ends up standing there uselessly until Lexie comes in. Alone. A glance outside shows Duke headed back toward the entrance where that young woman—Jennifer—stands, looking shy and happy (Nathan’s used to seeing that effect on women around Duke; he’s less used to seeing Duke bend, soft as he talks lowly to the smaller woman, a new sort of gentleness in the way he reaches out to take her hand). 

“All solved,” Lexie says as she hovers in the doorway, and Nathan forgets all about Duke and Jennifer and anything but the woman in front of him.

“How’d it go?” he asks, doing his best not to look too concerned.

“Easier than the last one.” She takes a step toward her desk (Nathan imagines his chest seizes up as he waits to see anything of Audrey shine through), but she just runs a finger over the surface (the picture frame and the stapler and the cup of pens Parker was perpetually losing) before turning away and flopping onto the couch, curling up like she had earlier. “Turns out this store clerk just felt helpless and overwhelmed. A little bit of listening, a few words of encouragement to help him ask out this girl he likes, and voila! Trouble solved and a happy ending all around.”

There’s something off about her tone, something wistful and…sad? (Or is that just him projecting? Just him seeing what he wants to see in this relevant tale of a guy wanting to connect with the woman he loves no matter that the whole world seems against them?)

“Are you okay?” he asks.

The glimmer (whatever it was) is gone just like that, shrugged away in favor of bravado. 

“Oh, yeah, Troubles, shmoubles. A bit of relationship advice is nothing compared to enforcing last call on a bunch of scary drunk guys in the middle of the night.”

He doesn’t think she’s _lying_ , exactly (no matter her persona, she always seems to take the Troubles in stride), but there’s definitely _something_ bothering her.

“Lexie,” he says (careful to pick the right name; careful not to sound too intense; careful not to crowd or pressure or _expect_ , even though that’s all this town can ever do to her, isn’t it?).

“Oh, but your biggest fan showed up and I get the feeling she doesn’t much like me either. Or Audrey, anyway—”

Nathan narrows his eyes. “Jordan was there?”

“Yeah, she your ex-girlfriend or something?” At his sharp denial, she makes a face. “Huh, well, she sure seems to have an awful lot of repressed rage about _something_. She sounded crazy, honestly, talking about needing to end the Troubles once and for all—said that if you were useful, then maybe _I’d_ be even more effective. What do you think that means?”

“Nothing good,” he mutters. When he glances down at a cracking sound, he sees his hands locked around the edges of his desk, the wood buckling beneath his grip. Carefully, slowly, he watches his hands open, lets them hang limply (uselessly) at his side.

Jordan wants Aud—Lex— _Parker_ dead. She thinks Parker is responsible for the Troubles—that the Troubles are Parker’s Trouble. Ridiculous and so, so dangerous. Is this the plan she’d been talking about, before they got Parker back? Could she _really_ think that killing Parker would end everything once and for all? 

Nathan’s never particularly minded Jordan wanting _him_ dead (she has just reasons), but there’s no way in hell he’ll let her get her hands on Parker.

“You really don’t like her,” Lexie observes, peering at the desk where he left cracked indentations. “Troubled history, huh?” And then she smirks at her own pun and Nathan can’t help but laugh (he remembers long hours spent sitting side by side in his Bronco or standing leaned against it while she teased and joked and prodded until he remembered what it felt like to laugh _with_ someone).

“Thank you,” he offers impulsively, “for helping us.”

(He wonders how many times the people of this town have troubled themselves to say that to her.)

“Yeah, well, you did say I’d be getting paid, so…” She shrugs, and Nathan’s sure he must be smiling at her (she’s always so blasé about her own amazing strengths, always so blind to everything she offers).

“Have dinner with me,” he blurts out. It’s blunt, inelegant, and surprises him as much as it does her, though naturally she recovers faster.

“Wow. Just like that, huh?” That strange glimmer ghosts briefly across her face again before she comes to her feet, dropping the strand of hair she was fiddling with. “Dinner? So, like, you’re asking me out?”

He swallows hard. “Yes,” he says. “I’m asking you out.”

(And he can’t help but wonder what could have, would have, been if he’d done this before, when she first came to town, the first time she made him laugh and he thought _maybe_ … But how could he have? When he had no connections, no practice in relationships, no confidence in anything but the fact that she’d one day look at him and see him as broken as the rest of Haven did? How can he _now_ when the truth is, he will always, _always_ get more out of any relationship between them than she will?)

Lexie studies him as openly, as intently, as Audrey often did. _Seeing_ him. _Learning_ him. _Knowing_ him and yet still looking (as if he’s worth more than just a cursory glance and then being relegated back to invisibility). Nathan feels himself growing stronger, bolder, more _real_ under her attention.

“All right,” she says, sounding half surprised at her own answer and half delighted. “Dinner, then. Just us.”

Nathan blinks, his steel melting away into startled disbelief. “Really?”

She laughs—not meanly. Almost fondly. “Yeah. I mean, you obviously need a few good meals, and I can always eat, and…well I’ve spent countless nights whining about wanting to find a good guy. You…well, you seem like a good guy. I’ve certainly said yes to far less likely options.”

“Don’t build me up too much,” he says dryly, and is charmed by her all over again when she laughs and steps nearer to him.

“You…” Her eyes are softer than he’s seen them on Lexie (Audrey-soft, nearly Sarah-soft). “You’ve been a friend to me since I got here.”

His mouth is dry and tastes vaguely of copper. “I am your friend,” he says, hoarse and raw and honest (vulnerable and needy and far too revealing).

“So. Dinner then.” Her eyes narrow, the moment passing. “Do you even have a place to live or do they just keep you—”

“I’ll pick you up,” he says defiantly (this is what they all want, after all, the mission he’s been given, so they will have to make allowances). “Tonight?”

“Okay.” It’s only belatedly that he realizes she’s _nervous_. Unsure. Audrey’s social awkwardness peeping through the corners of the jaded bartender. “I’ll try to find something worthy wearing,” she adds with a suggestion of her previous bite.

He wants to say something about how beautiful she looks, how beautiful she _always_ is, but the words don’t flow and he closes his mouth awkwardly over a clumsy mishmash he can’t quite get out (Duke would have been able to, he finds himself thinking), and then it’s too late.

“Tonight, Nathan,” she says, as if fixing his name in her memory (and, _oh_ , he wishes she really could).

“Tonight,” he promises.

(And for the first time in so long, he’s looking forward to something that isn’t his death.)

* * *

If it weren’t just a trick to lead to the end they’ve all decided is the right one, Nathan would almost feel whole that night, dressed in a suit jacket and tie the Guard insisted on, pulling up to the _Gray Gull_ in his Bronco (it’s been neglected and needs some work, but Nathan’s too happy to see it again to care too much), and seeing Parker open the door at his knock. She’s dressed in something more Lexie than Audrey, maybe, low-cut and tight, but dark blue like Audrey favored, and though she still has the nose ring in, her hair’s been pulled back so that it’s less obvious how different it is from Audrey’s.

“Hey,” he manages. He feels overdressed and underprepared and like a fraud (standing here where Duke should be) and Lexie’s smile is so open, so bold, that he feels like the worst kind of liar ( _love me_ , he’s telling her, _so that it will hurt when you have to kill me with your own hands_ ).

“Hey!” she chirps back. “Where are we headed?”

The entire night’s itinerary was prepared by the Guard, Vince biting out acidic comments, Dave’s mocking taunts more riling than helpful, Duke intervening to do most of the actual planning while Jennifer studied him with narrowed eyes and pursed mouth. Nathan had mostly just sat in the corner and let them hash it all out (it’s never going to be a specific dinner or a precise restaurant or an ambient atmosphere that will make Parker care about someone). 

Still, he lets himself wish for just a second that he’d been the one to ask her out of his own free will. He imagines what he’d have done if he’d been allowed to plan this date. He thinks that he would have skipped restaurants and the gazes of Haven entirely, would have cooked for Parker or let her cook for them, pancakes or something easy, would have let them stay entirely wrapped up in a world all their own, unbroken by the town. 

But it’s just a dream, and this is his reality. A few nights of leading Lexie DeWitt on, then a gun placed in her hand and a bullet in Nathan’s heart. 

An ending. A final moment to underscore his life.

A stop to all his guilt and his pain and his regret and his futile imaginings.

Lexie waves her hand in front of his face, startling him back into the moment. “Hey! You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry, just a little nervous, I guess.”

Her smile is slow and more Audrey than Lexie (but then, what does he know? He hardly knows Lexie at all) and beautiful.

“Shall we?” he asks, and tries not to stumble backward when she loops her arm through his and laughs.

“We shall.”

* * *

_Valentino’s Ristorante_ is too nice, fancy and expensive (Nathan’s wallet is heavy with cash the Teagues placed inside), the menu covered in names of food he can’t pronounce, too many choices of silverware beside their plates, and eyes on him from every direction.

“Wow,” Lexie says when the waiter’s finally let them be. She leans forward, her elbows placed directly on the pristine tablecloth, and Nathan finds himself admiring her boldness all over again. “I didn’t know the newspaper job paid so well.”

“You deserve to have a nice meal,” he says awkwardly (and it’s the truth even if he thinks that just like Audrey, Lexie would have preferred something a lot simpler). 

“Aww, you’re sweet.” Lexie leans back in her chair to rearrange the silverware (his plan to pick what fork to use by emulating her goes up in smoke). “So why’d you pick this place?”

“It…was a recommendation.” Nathan watches her shift in her seat and adds, “And I will never listen to that person’s advice again.”

Lexie’s laugh is quick and loud and sincere. “Good call. Do you even know what we ordered?”

“Not really.” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “But I know a good drive-through on the way back to the _Gull_ if that waiter brings us snails or something.”

“Two dinners in one night?” Lexie arches a mischievous brow. “You really know how to sweep a girl off her feet, don’t you, Wuornos?”

Nathan flinches and looks away. Big mistake. The four people seated at a nearby table are all familiar, all of them Guard-members who’ve made up his escort quite a few times (a couple of them have been the ones leading the mobs on those nights when the town feels he requires a more physical punishment).

Looking back to Lexie, he tries to center himself (remind himself what, _who_ , is really important here). “I, uh…” He’s already lying in everything but word; he can’t add actual spoken lies to his plate. “I’m not really good at this. I haven’t…really done it in a long time.”

Lexie sets her elbows back on the table so she can lean closer to him, her voice soft and low. “You want to know the truth? I haven’t either.” At his look, she holds up her hands. “No, really. I mean, I talk a good game, but actually finding a guy worth a second look or a yes isn’t as easy as you’d think. Late nights at the bars don’t exactly bring in the best of humanity, you know?”

“You’re there,” he says.

“What?” She blinks at him.

Nathan shifts, imagining that his face has probably flushed warm. “I just mean…you were there. Late at night. At the bar. So maybe there’s more good there than you thought.”

“It wasn’t actually a bar,” she reminds them after a quiet moment. “It was a barn in disguise.”

“Like us in this restaurant,” Nathan deadpans and is rewarded by her laugh.

“Yeah.” Her eyes are on him again, heavy and open and studying. It’s been so long since Nathan’s felt _seen_ , since he’s really been _heard_ , that he feels drunk even though he hasn’t taken even a single sip of the wine the waiter chose for them. “So who are you, Nathan Wuornos?” Lexie asks suddenly. “I’ve already figured out that you’re not really a bar-at-night kind of guy, and you’re not a cop anymore, you only write part-time—what _do_ you do?”

“I…want to help people,” he says, struggling for honesty (fighting not to react to how much it _hurts_ that she doesn’t know him). He looks away from her too-blue eyes, too-willing smile, too-condoning presence. “But mostly, I just seem to cause trouble.”

“Duke said you were helping, though.”

Nathan casts her a sharp glance (the whole scene seems to fracture, in some way, at the sound of Duke’s name on her lips). “What?”

“Duke. He said you’d been solving Troubles while he was gone. That you’d been doing everything you could to help.”

Of course. Duke knows as well as Nathan what catches Parker’s attention (and it has nothing to do with neckties or expensive food or baseless hope), and if the Guard refuse to let Nathan help Parker solve Troubles, then he must have had to bring Nathan into the thick of it somehow. He can’t imagine how much it must have galled Duke to have to talk him up to Lexie, and Nathan tries to be grateful but can summon up only a bit of chafed resentment.

“Not enough,” he finally says. “Besides, _you’re_ the one who really helps people. Look how much you’ve been able to do just since you got here. You’ve settled the tension that was eating this town alive, solved Troubles, you saved that man’s life today and who knows how many more that would have been affected by his Trouble.”

“But that’s not really me,” she says uncomfortably. “That’s all of you helping me, guiding me, telling me what to do. It’s what’s expected of me, and when everyone expects something, they end up seeing it even if it’s not really there.”

“Park—” Nathan takes a deep breath, a sip of the too-bitter wine, everything he can to pretend he hasn’t just made a misstep. “Lexie, trust me, I saw what Haven was like without you. And I know what it’s like now that you’re here. You make everything better. You help _people_ be better.”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” Lexie says, wry and sharp and vulnerable all at once. “Kind of like you.”

“What?”

Lexie takes a deep breath, her hand reaching up to tug a strand of her hair loose, playing it between her fingers. “You don’t really know _me_. You want me to be Audrey—that’s what you called me when you first saw me, when you put a gun in my hands and told me to kill you. I saw the picture on her desk, you and her together. Smiling. Happy. You don’t want me at all. You just want her, that woman you loved in the past, the woman who loved _you_ —and that’s a lot of pressure I don’t really deserve.”

Whatever Nathan would have said to that (however he could have explained the complicated, oh-so-simple truth) is interrupted by the arrival of their food. The waiter, having figured out that they have no idea what they ordered, sticks around to explain everything in heavily accented words that fly right over Nathan’s head. He can’t stop looking across at Lexie, who’s avoiding his gaze by pretending to be overly interested in the tiny portions before them.

Nathan blindly grabs a fork and takes a bite of the food. It’s tasteless, or maybe he just can’t spare any attention to process the taste. He needs to straighten this out now, before Lexie (before _Parker_ ) gets it fixed in her head that she’s interchangeable but separate. That she’s somehow a completely different person every time she comes back rather than the same person just seen through a different lens, with different life experiences but the same _heart_ inside.

“Lexie,” he tries to say, but she starts rambling about the food, about the presentation of it on the plates reminding her of some story from her past that Nathan really should care about (he needs to listen to her because he of all people knows how important it is to be heard), but he can’t focus past her misconception.

“I do want you to be Audrey,” he blurts out over her, so loud that the nearby tables all look over at him. Nathan ignores them (past time for him to turn the tables on them, after all). Leaning over his plate, he quietly says, “I made a decision that I thought led to Audrey’s death—I thought I’d killed her—so of course I want her back. I want her to be safe and here and happy. But…but I know that you’re not her. You’re Lexie, and you’re not a cop, you weren’t raised in a Catholic orphanage and you didn’t try to protect your foster siblings through any means necessary and then graduate from Quantico. I _know_ that. But I also know that no matter how terrifying things were for you when you got here, you were immediately willing to help. You put your life in danger to save other people. You left your whole life behind on a chance no one else would have taken. You accept all the craziness this town can throw at you because you’re drawn to its need. And that…that’s why you _are_ her, too, always, no matter what your name is.”

“You can’t know that,” Lexie says after a long moment where he has to remind himself to keep breathing. 

“I do,” he says firmly. “I do know that. It’s the one thing I really do know.”

Lexie puts her fork very slowly down on her plate. They’ve barely eaten at all, but the plate’s nearly empty and Nathan doesn’t know who suggested this restaurant but whoever it was doesn’t know Parker or him at all. 

“And you want me to kill you.”

Nathan stares.

“It’s not that hard to figure out,” Lexie says with a shrug so casual it comes across as forced. “The first thing you did was put a gun in my hand and aim it at yourself. So why all _this_? The dates and the setups and the Guard being in on it? What happens when I kill you? And why _you_?”

“Why not me?” he replies. His voice sounds strained, but he feels calmer than he has since Vince took him to a morgue (finally the lies can all stop). “If one person’s life can end all the Troubles forever, who _wouldn’t_ make that sacrifice?”

“I don’t know,” she snaps, suddenly angry for no reason Nathan can tell, “maybe someone who’s actually smart enough to question something that seems a little too easy.”

Nathan winces away. “I wouldn’t exactly call any of this _easy_.” He hates the sullen note in his own voice (but this is his one chance, the only thing that gives him any sort of hope, and it stings to have it brushed aside like a fantasy).

“Yeah, well, just don’t expect me to be firing any bullets any time soon, at you or at anyone else.” Lexie’s smile is thin and bitter. “Jennifer may have heard some of what went on in that barn, but I heard some things while in there too, you know.”

The room goes still. So quiet that Nathan can hear his heartbeat pounding away in his ears.

“Like what?” he asks through lips that don’t want to move.

“Like the fact that it’s only by killing the person I love _most_ that this will all be over. And…” Lexie pauses, then takes a deep breath while she fiddles with her hair. “And I don’t love you, so…what’s the point?”

He can’t move. Can’t think. Probably can’t breathe or feel, but then, that’s hardly new. He doesn’t fool himself into thinking it will kill him, though. No, his punishment is, as always, to survive and to endure.

“Is that what all of this is for?” Lexie waves a hand at their fancy surroundings, the Guard-members watching them from afar (watching him fail, as they knew all along he’d do). “You want me to fall in love with you?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he finally says, and looks down at his plate.

The waiter tries to talk them into dessert, but Lexie doesn’t seem interested so Nathan just pulls out his borrowed wallet and sets out the Guard’s cash. (He feels dirty, cheap; he’s not the willing sacrifice anymore, just a discarded tool that has lost its usefulness.)

It's only when they’re alone again, together in the Bronco as he drives her back home, that he finally manages to speak. 

“If you knew all along,” he says, “then why’d you go along with it? Why go out with me at all?”

She plays with her hair for only a second before letting her hands drop to her lap as she looks out the window (away from him; she has, he thinks, seen her fill of him). “I don’t know,” she says quietly. “I guess I just…I wanted to see.”

To see if she _could_ love him? To see if there was anything there worth her time? 

And there isn’t. She can’t. It’s Duke she talks to and trusts and cares for, and in the end, it will be Duke who dies and Lexie who’s broken and Nathan who’s once more all alone, bent under the weight of his failures.

“I’m sorry, Nathan,” she says when he parks the Bronco outside her apartment. The lights of the _Gull_ are brightly lit, noise spilling out into the parking lot. Nathan wonders if Lexie will leave his dark, cold Bronco and head into the bright merriment to seek out Duke. “I know this isn’t what you wanted.”

“It’s fine.” Nathan takes a deep breath. “Probably best if you don’t go around telling everyone you can’t love me, though. The Guard are only playing along because they think this plan has a chance of working. Who knows what they’ll do if they know it’s hopeless.”

She turns to him, her body angled in the seat to face him, and in the dark, in the quiet, Nathan imagines a different context to this scene (he shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t, it’ll be far more painful than any blows the Guard rain down on him). Imagines a date where she’d laughed with him and reached out to touch his hand, a fleeting touch not nearly as invigorating as the warmth of her eyes. Imagines this scene here, alone, with takeout bags between them and pancakes warm in the carryout boxes and syrup on her chin and laughter spilling between them as he reaches out to wipe it away.

“What will the Guard do to you?” she asks, expression grimmer than any he’s seen on Lexie before. “If their plan doesn’t work.”

“They won’t hurt you,” he assures her. “You’re too important.”

“But what will they do to _you_?”

“Don’t worry.” He looks away, all his imaginings drying up and drifting away like dust in the wind. “It’s fine.”

“Nathan…”

“You know, we should get pancakes.” He tries a smile but figures it probably fails even before it begins (that is what he’s known for, after all). “No pressure. No expectations. Just friends having some pancakes for breakfast before heading out to solve more Troubles.”

“Pancakes?” Lexie opens the door and jumps down to the ground as she makes a face. “Ugh.”

Nathan’s not quite sure why this hurts more than everything else combined, but it does, sending a sharp spike of white-hot grief through his heart (even a Trouble can’t take away that kind of pain, he thinks). 

“Lexie!” He leans across the seat to look down at her, meeting her eyes and wishing he could read whatever secrets swim there in blue and gray and determination. “About what you said earlier… All Audrey Parker wanted was a chance to be herself. She fought so hard for it. And no matter how much I wish I’d been able to help her do that, I… Well, I imagine that Lexie DeWitt deserves just as much of a chance as Audrey Parker did.”

She stares at him for a long moment ( _seeing_ him again, which means this admission, no matter how painful, was worth it), then gives him the suggestion of a smile (small but honest). “Thank you,” she says, and then the door slams between them and the Guard-members that have followed them from the restaurant honk to get him moving. Back to his prison. Back to his endless punishment.

Back to a life without Audrey.

* * *

That night, crammed on his small cot, Nathan dreams. Not the soft, gentle dreams that cut so deeply and tore so sharply. These dreams are different. 

He stands in a classroom, unprepared and vulnerable, and is handed a quiz he can’t possibly pass. 

_Who do you love?_ the question reads, but the correct answer isn’t even on the page. Sarah Vernon, Lucy Ripley, Audrey Parker, Lexie DeWitt. Each choice a name he knows (red curls and soft touch; a face marked by tears and a son he’ll never know; friend and partner and ally; a stranger who isn’t a stranger), but none of them are the right answer.

The real Sarah Vernon was probably a lovely woman, but he wouldn’t have been so drawn to her. She could have told him stories of her time in the Korean War just like Sarah did, but it wouldn’t have touched him as her voice did. 

The real Lucy Ripley was hard to find, smart and cunning and willing to help Audrey when she came to her, but what about her would have intrigued him next to the woman he sent her way?

The real Audrey Parker was someone he didn’t care to know, more abrasive, less trusting, completely uninteresting to him so that he felt as if it were a stranger who eventually had all her memories taken away.

The real Lexie DeWitt is someone he doubts he’d even give a second look.

It’s not the memories, not the pasts, not the mannerisms and hair colors and style of clothes that charm and bewitch him.

It’s _her_. Parker. The woman beneath them all, the true personality overwritten by false memories but shining through nonetheless.

Nathan stares down at the paper in his hands and cannot move no matter that the timer is ticking down. 

When he looks up, Sarah stands before him, dressed in her white uniform and smiling so coyly at him. (His greatest weakness; his most precious memory.) When he looks to his left, Lucy Ripley stands over the shadowy figure of their son, dead first at some stranger’s hand and now at his. (His greatest crime; his most terrifying truth.) When he looks to the right, it is Lexie DeWitt, smirking and distant and playing with the hair hanging over her shoulders. (His greatest fear; his most painful reality.) And behind him, just out of sight, he can feel her: Audrey Parker, the woman he knows best, the woman he knows least, his closest friend and his most frustrating puzzle. (His greatest desire; his most elusive dream.)

And Nathan stands in the very center of them all, alone. Isolated. Unable to reach any of them but equally as unable to escape them. 

Her.

Parker.

Four names, but only one woman, and he can’t understand why she can’t understand that.

_Who do you love?_

All of them. 

But that answer’s not accepted, and his time runs out, and they all vanish, leaving him alone and calling out the name of a woman who will never call back his own.

* * *

Nathan’s not surprised to learn there is a dream Trouble, though he’s thankful for the timing of it, since the news that it might be connected to the Herald interrupts the grilling Vince and Dave are giving him about his date with Lexie. He is surprised that they let him go to the morgue as if he might actually get to be a part of this case (a single date has allayed more fears than he anticipated, built up more hopes than he’s entirely comfortable with). 

Lexie’s already there, and she gives him a faint smile in greeting. Anything more she might say is cut off by the arrival of the coroner.

Gloria used to be a fixture of the Haven PD; Nathan remembers the Chief talking about her, grumbled complaints mixed in amid grudging admiration and healthy respect. Nathan remembers speaking to her only once before, when Garland dragged him along to some case where Gloria met them at the crime scene tape. She’d scowled down at Nathan, scowled up at the Chief, then said, “Hey, kid, why don’t you go to Benji’s and get some ice cream for me. I suppose some for yourself too.”

Nathan remembered asking her what flavor she wanted and she’d waved him off irritably. “Surprise me, kid—I imagine you’re good at that, aren’t you?”

Then she’d handed him a ten-dollar bill, Garland had shooed him off, and Nathan had spent a peaceful hour with Benji and his cows before coming back with a coffee-and-almond cone for Gloria. She’d been gone already and Garland had eaten the cone himself, leaving Nathan feeling guilty, like he’d stolen the old woman’s money.

Now, she bustles into the room calling for her intern, scowls to see him, scowls at Lexie, then says, “Hey, kid, where’s my ice cream?”

“What?” Lexie frowns in confusion while Nathan actually feels a hint of laughter bubbling up inside him.

“Long eaten,” he says, “but even it wasn’t, I think it’d have melted a while ago.”

“You owe me ten bucks,” she says, then turns to the body without missing a beat. She needles Lexie, enough so that the bartender actually snaps at her a few times (something Nathan hasn’t seen anyone else accomplish). If he didn’t know better, he’d say Lexie felt defensive, but he’s not sure why she’d need to.

“Don’t forget my ice cream next time!” Gloria calls after him, and Nathan waves back with a nod (it’s refreshing being around someone who only puts the blame for an ice cream cone on him rather than the fate of a town).

“Hey.” Lexie reaches out as if to take his wrist before they can rejoin his escort, and Nathan’s not sure if he’s more relieved or disappointed when her hand falls away before it can reach his. “About last night, I…” Nathan stiffens and looks desperately toward the door. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. I can be a little blunt and…and maybe I get hyper-focused on one thing and ignore the rest.”

“I know,” he says, then winces when Lexie looks away.

“Right.”

“I’m sorry, I just meant—”

“No,” she says. “I’m sorry. Hurting you is _not_ what I meant to do.”

Nathan can’t help but smile, then. An entire town out to destroy him for his crimes, but Lexie wants to apologize for telling him the truth.

“Thank you,” he finally settles for saying. She doesn’t look happy with the response, but she takes it and that’s enough for now (that’s all he’ll ever have from now on).

“How’s it going?” Duke asks him a bit later, checking in on Lexie though he looks nervous and preoccupied. “I heard you had dinner last night.”

Nathan checks that his guards aren’t in earshot (that Lexie is busy narrowing down what exactly about the Herald connects all their victims). “Look, Duke, I don’t…I don’t think this is going to work.”

“What?” 

“She…she doesn’t care about me, all right? Even if she kills me, I don’t know if it will end the Troubles.”

“Nate, I know you’ve got some self-esteem issues going on, but let me be perfectly frank with you, okay, because I’m losing my patience: that woman _loves_ you.”

“I think you may need to get out of town,” Nathan blurts. “If the Guard realize that her killing me won’t work, they’re going to come after you, Crocker Trouble or not. Besides, didn’t they say your brother was in town? They probably think of it as having a spare.”

Duke unexpectedly bridles, the friendliness falling away from him like a mask. “What does my brother have to do with anything? He’s not even Troubled, okay? Just leave him out of this.”

Nathan squints at Duke. “Did you even hear me, Duke? I’m saying I think you should run. In fact, you should probably take Jennifer with you. Just get out of town while you still can.”

“Jennifer? I can’t. She’s at a job interview at the Haven Herald.”

It takes a minute for Nathan to process that enough to know why he suddenly feels so unsettled. “What? What job interview?”

“She used to be a reporter,” Duke says impatiently. “Dave and Vince said they might need another hand around the place.”

“Oh.” Nathan looks over to where Lexie is sitting at Audrey’s desk, her hands for once busy with files rather than a strand of her hair. 

He’s already been replaced. His place as Audrey’s partner. His temporary job as a writer for the Herald. Even whatever rivalry/friendship thing he had going with Duke looks to be supplanted by whatever sibling/rivalry thing he has with his brother. 

It’s all coming together for his graceful exit.

(If only his death would actually solve anything.)

“Look, Nathan,” Duke says, “just keep trying, okay? I’ll talk to Lexie and try to find out what’s going on, but you? Just…you know, keep being charming.”

* * *

His dreams that night are even more disturbing. It’s another classroom, but this time there are items resting on each desk around him. Lucy Ripley’s locket on one, Sarah’s white cap on another, Audrey’s badge directly next to him, and a half-empty glass of liquor on the desk closest to the door. On his own desk, there’s a piece of paper with another question.

_Who does Parker love most?_

His name isn’t one of the choices. 

Duke Crocker, James Cogan, Chris Brody, Garland Wuornos—but no Nathan Wuornos.

Nathan looks up from the page and sees a gun resting on his desk where a pencil should be.

“Might as well,” Audrey says from somewhere behind him. “We all know it wouldn’t help if _I_ did it.”

“Maybe if I did it,” Sarah says.

“Don’t look at me,” Lexie says with a shrug, while Lucy is utterly silent.

Nathan can’t look away from one name on that page.

“James,” he whispers.

“Is that your answer?” Audrey asks him, and the gun goes off.

* * *

Nathan wakes in a pool of blood drip-drip-dripping along the edge of the cot to the floor of the Herald. He’d barely had a chance to try to get between the bullet and the Colorado Kid’s ( _James’s_ ) body so it only grazed his arm, but it still frightens him to see the long strip along his right arm, red crimson against dark bruises.

He bandages it himself, but Dave’s eyes sharpen on sight of the blood-stained rags Nathan’s still holding when they unlock the backroom door to let him out. 

“I think I’m being affected by the dream Trouble,” he admits, and Dave pulls him into the front where Vince calls Dwight and Duke and Jennifer bustle in a few minutes later. It’s too much noise and pressure and people when Nathan’s used to silent recrimination, so he goes quiet. They try to ask him about his dream, but he clamps his mouth shut (no way he’s bringing any of that nightmare out into the open).

“What’s going on?” Lexie asks when she steps inside. “I thought we were supposed to meet at the station.”

“There’s been a complication,” Duke says. Nathan’s surprised when he doesn’t even rise to his feet, just keeps sitting at Jennifer’s side while Lexie’s eyes grow wide as she looks at Nathan.

“Nathan?”

“It’s fine,” he says hastily, “just a scratch.”

“And we’ll keep it that way,” Vince says in a halfhearted attempt at a reassuring tone. “If Carrie Benson _is_ the common link between this—”

“And she probably is,” Dave interjects, “since Nathan reads the extra papers she brings back here.”

“—then we’ll be able to talk to her and figure this all out,” Vince finishes.

“She’s already long since delivered the morning edition, but we’ll catch her before she can get out the afternoon papers,” Dave says.

Lexie shifts uncomfortably, her fingers tapping against her thigh as she looks from the Teagues brothers to Nathan. “Uh, why don’t you guys go find her now? Don’t you have her phone number?”

Vince narrows his eyes, all intractable suspicion. “Why? Are we in a hurry?”

“Well, not everyone has the same sleep schedule,” Lexie snaps acerbically. “So what if, I don’t know, someone who works a graveyard shift is just about to go to sleep and dream about a nuclear explosion or something?”

“That would be bad,” Dave says with a look at Vince.

“Fine,” Vince grumbles.

“Great. You guys get her—she trusts you both, right? She’s worked for you how long? You bring her back here, and presto, we’ll solve another Trouble with just a bit of encouragement, counseling, and fairy dust.”

“You really are getting the hang of this place, aren’t you?” Duke mutters, and Lexie glares over at him. 

“You have any better ideas, Duke?”

He holds his hands up and shakes his head. “Just saying. Seems like you already understand how important it is to get _everything_ out in the open.”

“You guys going?” Lexie asks, looking at the Teagues expectantly. 

Nathan frowns. Something’s wrong here. Something he can’t quite catch hold of but that simmers in the air all around them. Jennifer catches his eye for just a minute, as confused as he is, and Nathan belatedly tries to give her a smile (she’s the reason Lexie is here at all, after all, and he never got a chance to even talk to her).

But then Lexie’s dropping into the chair right next to him, so close he can smell her (still lilies and lilacs and _Parker_ ), her gaze locked on the bandage around his arm. “What did you dream about?” she asks. There’s a shadow of fear in her voice, though Nathan’s sure they’ve told her that she’s immune to the Troubles.

“Nothing much,” he says after a hesitation ( _James_ and his fault and death all swirling through his mind). “It’s just a graze, nothing too bad.”

“Dwight woke up with a knife wound to his shoulder, said something about a strange knife-tip connected to some murders.”

“What?” Duke’s voice sounds choked. “What murders? How many?”

Lexie barely spares him a glance. “I don’t know, it’s not a Troubled case. Nathan, is that a _bullet_ graze?”

“It’s quite a bit less than he deserves.”

Nathan jerks his head up toward the voice at the same time as everyone else in the room, all of them looking to the door where Jordan stands, confident and smug and vindicated. Behind her, there’s a man in a dress shirt and black gloves, his eyes cold and calculating. 

“Wade?” Duke says. “What are you doing here?”

And then everything devolves into chaos.

* * *

Jordan has a gun, Wade has a knife, Duke is shocked, Lexie’s silent, Jennifer’s huddled behind Duke and his outstretched arm, and Nathan can only stare.

(You were selfish, they told him when he raised a gun against Howard.)

Jordan points the gun at him, her arm rock-steady, her eyes flinty and uncompromising. “Go on, Wade,” she says without looking away from Nathan. “You know what you have to do.”

( _You were stupid_ , they told him when he dared to try to break the cycle.)

“This will end everything,” Wade tells Duke when he tries to get between him and Lexie. “You might not be strong enough to try, but I can do it.”

( _You were wrong_ , they told him when he dared to stand before their accusations and not bow his head before their accusations.)

“What are you doing, Jordan?” Nathan finally asks. “This isn’t the answer. You think killing Howard was a mistake? What do you think killing Parker will do to Haven?”

“It will end all the Troubles!” she spits. “Not just for you, but for all of us!”

(Every night, bruised and numb, Nathan lists out the cost of his decision. Every day, he lives out the consequences. 

He wonders if Jordan’s prepared to live out her own ramifications.)

“And if it doesn’t?” he asks quietly.

Jordan’s there an instant later, the room spinning and lurching as she pushes him back, does something that makes his legs fold underneath him until he’s kneeling before her. When he looks up, there’s a woman (the wrong woman) standing over him and a gun (in the wrong hand) aimed at his head and this will accomplish absolutely _nothing_.

“Nathan!” 

The scream comes from behind him. It’s strange and jarring because it sounds so familiar. He’s heard this cry before, the desperate edge to it, the steel at the ends of panic, the concern and the care that once gave him hope for something more in his (in _their_ ) future.

But it’s impossible. It’s wrong. He must be imagining it.

Imagining Lexie with Audrey’s cold experience in her eyes. Imagining Lexie lunging forward and grappling for a gun with all Audrey’s determination. Imagining the way she says his name again when Jordan fires off a shot that rings in his ears like endless thunder.

Off to the side, Duke is rolling on the floor with Wade, Wade’s grabbing for the knife, for Jennifer, something dead in his face and eyes that makes Nathan want to shudder. Somewhere behind them, he thinks he hears the door opening, thinks he hears more people (his Guard escort? Vince and Dave back with Carrie Benson? he can’t tell, can’t look past Jordan and Lexie, Lexie?, fighting for control of the gun). 

Nathan’s limbs don’t want to obey him, but he forces through whatever’s holding him back and manages to grab hold of one of Jordan’s arms. In the next instant, Lexie has Jordan’s weapon and is standing over Jordan, who collapses in on herself, face crumpling. 

“This isn’t fair!” she insists.

“Jordan? What is this?” Vince looms over the scene, his brother and Carrie behind him. “I thought we talked about this.”

Jordan’s weakness folds itself away behind brittle strength. “I’m sorry, Vince, but sometimes, some of us have to be monsters for the greater good.”

“And what? Killing Nathan was supposed to be part of the greater good, too?” Lexie hisses out, furious and vengeful and everything Nathan remembers Audrey being when the Rev held him on his knees near a cabin in the woods.

(There’s a cop peeking out from under the dyed hair and heavy makeup and nose ring. A cop. Not a bartender. A savior well-used to Haven’s idiosyncrasies and secrets, not a woman still learning to accept every crazy thing thrown her way.)

“He deserves it!” Jordan cries, and then she tackles Lexie.

At first, Nathan thought she was trying for the gun again. It took him a long moment, _too_ long, to realize that Jordan had been keeping a closer eye on Duke and Wade than Nathan had. A delayed moment to process that Jordan wasn’t attacking Lexie herself so much as pushing her toward Wade. Wade, who still has a knife in his hand. Wade, whom Duke had fallen away from as the scene had slowed. 

Wade, who turns with an unholy hunger in his eyes, greedy and murderous and everything Nathan once thought Duke would become. 

“Audrey!” Duke shouts.

The world goes still. 

Oh, many things happen. Duke lunges for Wade. The knife turns. There is the sound of metal sinking into flesh and the thump of a body hitting the floor and blood on Duke’s hands and silver in his eyes. There is the sound of a gunshot and the thump of a black-gloved body hitting the floor and hurt fading from Jordan’s eyes and blood staining the Haven Herald. There’s a scream as Jennifer ducks and a quiet moment where she creeps forward to fold herself in around Duke’s shuddering form. There’s the feel of eyes from old men who’ve seen this town tear itself apart in every conceivable way and the harsh breathing from Carrie as she flattens herself against the door behind her. 

But for all intents and purposes to Nathan, the world simply stops.

_Audrey._

All Duke’s manic overcompensation. The looks he and Lexie ( _Lexie_ ) shared, the hidden subtext to their conversation, the glares and the snapped retorts and the tension that never seemed to break whatever bond had sprung up between them so quickly.

_Audrey_.

Lexie saying yes to a date, dressing up for him, looking like she was willing, like she was tempted, like she _might_ , maybe, possibly _could_ love him. Her eyes on him, _seeing_ him, _knowing_ him, and it wasn’t Sarah all over again—it was the Hunter meteor storm all over again.

_Audrey_.

Slowly, so slowly he feels as if his every bone is cracking within the ponderous weight of his fragile frame, Nathan looks up from Jordan’s body to Lexie.

And he sees Audrey. Standing alone in the middle of the room. Gun in hand, strength in every line of her body, clear-eyed and steel-willed and forever denied him.

_Audrey_ , and all this time he thought he was tricking her, she was lying to _him_. Lying and using and tricking, a stall tactic, a diversion, a decoy, a _dupe_. 

He’s never been her friend. He was never her partner. He wasn’t even an ally.  
  
Instead, from the very beginning to now, he is always, _always_ standing on an opposing side to her.

( _You were pathetic_ , they all silently judged while they let him fool himself into thinking he could ever mean anything.)

She lied and Duke knew it all along and this is all Nathan will ever be: a convenient patsy.


	5. Chapter 5

In a shocking turn of events, they lock him away, shut up alone in the backroom of the death-stained Herald. Nathan doesn’t even care. (He wishes, suddenly and fiercely, that Jordan had fired a bullet at him as soon as she entered the building so that he didn’t have to live long enough to know just how little Audrey thinks of him.) He sits beside his cot, the smell of blood thick in his nostrils, and rewrites his rose-stained memories with the truth of reality.

As if to hammer in exactly how different his fantasies are from reality, when the door opens, it is only so the Guard can shove Duke inside. Nathan wants to look away (to ignore the sight of Duke as easily as his body ignores the feel of everything), but something in Duke’s posture catches his attention.

Duke doesn’t protest being shoved inside. He doesn’t move inside and prowl the edges of the room, or plop himself down as if completely unconcerned. Instead, he slumps down into a seat and just stares at his hands. 

Hands that should, Nathan belatedly remembers, be stained with blood. 

Wade’s blood was all over Duke, but it vanished and Duke’s eyes turned silver before completely fading back to their usual dark brown (but dulled without their usual sheen of cunning scheming and backhanded concern) as he stared down at the body of his brother.

“Duke,” he rasps (because he knows, doesn’t he, what it’s like to have blood genetically similar to your own on your own hands? knows twice-over, once for a father and once for a son and though the blood is long gone, Nathan knows he will never escape it).

“It’s gone,” Duke says numbly. “I killed my own brother and in return get what I wanted most. What kind of justice is that?”

“You saved Audrey,” Nathan says (and if there’s a hint of acid on the name, well, Duke is too preoccupied to really notice). “That earns you a lot. You probably saved the whole town, really.”

“Wade shouldn’t have been here. He didn’t need to get tangled up in all _this_. But then,” Duke’s laugh is mirthless, painful, “that’s what Haven does, right? Sucks you in and pulls you under until you drown.”

“I’m sorry,” Nathan finally says. “No one should have to be responsible for killing their own family.”

Duke finally moves, raising his head as if his neck is a joint badly oiled, stiff and creaky as he turns to look at Nathan. “But you still want Audrey to kill you, don’t you?”

Nathan almost chokes on something thick and burning in his throat. “Guess all chance of that ever working is off the table now.”

“Look,” Duke sits up straighter, though his hands are tucked under his knees and out of sight. “It’s not what you think.”

“You knew,” Nathan says before Duke can even try to lie to him again (turn him into the dupe for the countless time). “This whole time, you’ve known?”

“The body-snatching Trouble,” Duke says. “I knew there was no way she’d leave me alone with the Troubled killer unless she knew my own Trouble would—” His voice chokes as he’s reminded of his current situation, and Nathan could almost feel bad for him as he stares back down at his clean hands.

“So all those times you were encouraging me to win her,” Nathan says (not sure whether his anger or his compassion is what prompts him to distract Duke from his own pain for now), “telling me there was hope…you were just lying. Again.”

Duke actually rolls his eyes (Nathan’s compassion is fast dwindling). “Come on, Nate, I know you’re upset, but Audrey just wants to save your life.”

“Why?”

Groaning, Duke seems to forget what should be stained over his hands as he waves them helplessly in the air. “Really?”

“Why save my life at all,” Nathan grits out,” when what my life _consists_ of matters so little—to both of you?”

“The first thing you did was put a gun in her hand and aim it at your own heart! Even you have to see how extreme—”

“No. No!” Nathan snaps, anger rising in him, overwhelming him, and any minute now he’ll snap, strike out, wild and uncontrollable (too much like Max Hansen and the dark legacy inside him), so extreme, so stark against his usual numbness that it will make everyone look at him as if he’s crazy (as if he’s no more than a petulant child; or worse, as if he’s a monster waiting to shed the hollow cocoon to emerge into the world). “You don’t get to sit there and pretend like I’m the one who doesn’t understand what’s going on. Not this time.”

“She won’t kill you.”

“She has no _idea_ what my life has been like for the past seven months, but she still thinks she knows how to live it better than me. And you?” Nathan is on his feet, closer to Duke, staring down at him, looming (like his father did, in shadowed memories that Nathan tries his best to keep buried deep). “You know what it’s like. What it’s _always_ been like. And why am I even surprised? You knew what my life was like before, too, when you first came back to Haven all those years ago. And yet you still… You pretended to be my friend. You always pretend—and I always fall for it. You’d think I’d learn eventually.”

Duke stares. Typical, Nathan thinks, that he is speechless only now when it _matters_.

The door opening interrupts nothing because that was, he is sure, the end of the conversation (no apologies, no explanations, because what does a patsy really need of any of those things?).

Audrey stands on the threshold.

Nathan makes himself really look at her. The stance. The tentative expression. The cock to her hips where she’s used to balancing the dual weights of a gun and a badge. Her hands don’t reach for any hair to play with. Her eyes are wide open and observant rather than half-lidded and cynical. She’s still dark-haired, still wears a nose ring and Lexie’s cobbled-together outfit, but it is Audrey standing there. Audrey looking him over. Audrey’s eyes going wide and worried as she notices the blood he can smell staining the bandages over his right bicep.

“Nathan!” she cries, and even as she takes a step into the room, her hand is stretched out, reaching toward him as if to touch him (to pull him back under her spell).

Nathan flinches backward.

It’s as if he fired a gunshot (into Howard, into the Barn, into any possible future where he could be happy). The room is silent. Still. Each of them frozen in place.

It hurts, being stuck here between them both—the woman he would have loved and the friend he would have accepted (if not for the lies littered at their feet, detritus of a life-that-could-have-been).

“Was it Carrie?” he finally asks. “The dream Trouble?”

It takes a long second for Audrey to answer (but when she does, with every word, more of the Lexie façade falls away). “Yes. But she said her Trouble has only ever affected the women of her family, never anyone else. There’s more, though—the men who mugged her and triggered her Trouble? They were in the Barn.”

“The Barn?” Duke’s on his feet in the blink of an eye, worry staining his voice. “Jennifer might have heard them, then. You don’t think they’d go after her, do you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what they want.” Audrey looks back to Nathan (he tries not to curl in on himself to escape the scrutiny). “She was able to resolve it, though, Nathan. You don’t have to worry about your dreams anymore.”

Nathan scoffs (reminded that there’s no reason to escape her scrutiny when it’s clear she doesn’t really see _him_ at all). “Right. Because that’s what I’ve been worried about—the dream Trouble.”

This time, she’s the one to flinch. “Nathan, I’m sorry, okay? But I couldn’t kill you—”

“Why did her Trouble change?” he asks, resolute and unflinching and everything he isn’t really (not deep inside where his Trouble doesn’t affect the ache on his heart at all). Despite his anger, though, he can’t really make himself not see the hurt in her eyes, so he focuses on the bridge of her nose, the suggestion of a freckle.

“She… I don’t know. But there was a glowing black handprint on her shoulder—one only I could see.” She pauses, then, and looks to Duke (of course she does; Nathan isn’t even surprised save in that it took her so long). “Which, speaking of what no one else saw… I convinced Dave and Vince to tell everyone that you killed Jordan, Duke, and that I killed Wade.”

“Great.” Duke smiles a smile that looks more like a scowl as he slumps back into his seat. “Wouldn’t do not to be useful to the Guard.”

“How nice for you both,” Nathan mutters.

“I know you may not approve of my methods, Nathan, but I had to save you!” Audrey protests. “If they knew I was still Audrey Parker, they would have made me kill you and I couldn’t let that happen.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” he asks with a jerk of his chin to indicate their confinement.

He wishes he’d said nothing at all when she flinches, her eyes falling away, throat working as she swallows. “I think Vince feels bad about letting Jordan get so out of hand, so he’s giving us a bit of leeway.”

Nathan’s laugh is bitter and sharp. “Until _what_ , exactly? It’s not like we have any other solutions.”

“Nathan—”

“No. This whole time, all the time I thought you were Lexie, you were actually Audrey. You lied to me—again. You hid things from me—again. You confided in Duke—again. I may not be the fastest learner, but even I get it eventually.”

(If he thought listing out all the blades littered in his back would help, he was so, so wrong.)

“You don’t get it!” Audrey snaps. “This is exactly the reason I couldn’t tell you! You’re with _them_. You _want_ me to pull the trigger on you. And I will never, _never_ do that!”

“Why not?” he cries out. “We have a way to end all the Troubles forever— _why_ won’t you take it?”

She stares at him. Silent. Mute. (Too kind to tell him that his death would solve nothing. Too cruel to bother to put him out of his misery anyway.)

The door opens again (astounding how easy it is for everyone else to come in and out while he’s locked away with no recourse) and Dwight stares at them all with narrow eyes and the distinct impression of not being impressed.

“Dwight!” Duke leaps forward. “Where’s Jennifer? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. The Teagues sent her out on some kind of assignment. It’s Vince and Dave we should be worried about right now. Seems like, as usual, they’re in the middle of a Trouble.”

“Let me help,” Nathan demands immediately (Audrey’s eyes are like weights on his back).

Dwight sighs. “Nathan, you know we can’t risk—”

“I’m useless to you now,” Nathan says (someone has to actually say the truth aloud, even if it makes Audrey gasp and Duke groan). “Audrey says that only the person she loves the most can end the Troubles, and we all know what that means. Let me do _something_ useful.”

“Nathan, please—” Audrey’s hand touches his, blazing life into his fingers, like lightning forking illumination over the whole world.

Nathan recoils so violently that he runs up against the filing cabinets, setting them rocking with a clatter that underscores the reverberations in his bones. He has to resist the urge to clasp his tingling hand close, as if she’s scorched him rather than just touched him.

When he chances a quick glance, he sees Audrey far away from him, small and contained, arms held close to her body, eyes hollow and desolate. 

Like injury on top of insult. 

Nathan can’t bear to see anymore.

Spinning toward Dwight, he begs, “ _Please_ ,” and like he did once before, Dwight takes pity on him.

“Well,” he says, “we do have a pressure problem—and it looks like Jack Driscoll might be involved in some way.”

That sparks something besides yawning pain. Nathan frowns and says, “Driscolls aren’t Troubled.”

“You didn’t think your dad was either,” Duke says, caustic and annoyed and something else Nathan can’t make himself turn and identify (not when he’s busy pretending that barb didn’t hurt).

Nathan stares ahead and sees nothing. “Turns out there’s a lot I don’t know.”

* * *

There’s not only a lot Nathan didn’t know, there’s a lot he knew that no longer seems to apply.

Troubles don’t change. Families don’t spontaneously catch new Troubles. Nothing in Haven ever really changes.

All false. All changing right in front of him.

“I thought you’d be gone,” Duke says abruptly, when they stand at the edge of a bubble surrounding a park surrounding a new father eaten up by panic and terror and loneliness. Behind them, Audrey and Dwight are talking to Jack (trying to distract him from asking, again, for Duke to kill him and end this new Trouble forever), a shattered phone in Jack’s hands, his connection to his brother lost.

“What are you talking about?”

“When I got back to Haven,” Duke says, “I thought you’d be long gone.”

Neither of them look at each other. Both of them stare ahead at the trail of devastation leading to this newest horror Haven has to offer.

“Even if I would have considered leaving, the Guard would never have allowed it.”

“No, I…” Duke takes a deep breath. “When I came back to Haven all those years ago. I thought you’d be gone. I mean, I know your Trouble still would have been there if you’d left, but after everything this town has done to you, I didn’t think there was any way you wouldn’t have gotten as far away as possible. I mean, _I’ve_ thought about leaving, more all the time. I _should_ have made Wade leave.”

“Haven’s my home,” Nathan says shortly ( _the Chief_ , he thinks, and _vindication_ and _fear_ and _loneliness_ , all things he can never put into words, just a swirling mass of confusion that always kept him planted here with unbending roots).

“Come on, Nathan!” Duke scoffs, startling him into looking over at him. “What has this place ever done but dump on you? I thought…when I got back and found you still here, I thought I could give you a way to strike back. A way to fight when your whole life, everyone’s…” His jaw clenches. “ _We’ve_ only ever told you to stand still and take it.”

There’s nothing he can find to say to that. Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t know what Duke _expects_ him to say. He’s long since resigned himself to this being an issue that would never be addressed, and certainly not by Duke. But here they are, and Nathan can’t process that it’s happening, let alone what difference it makes to know that Duke was trying to help him in his own way rather than just targeting him.

“I know you’ve helped Haven,” Duke adds. “You’re willing to sacrifice your own life to save everyone here. But…what has Haven ever done for _you_?”

_Parker_.

The name is there, dancing on the tip of his tongue, hanging in the air between them. It’s the truth, the one thing that has ever made staying here in Haven bearable. But it’s also a lie, because Parker isn’t his, will never be his, and he will never be hers.

Duke snorts and shakes his head. “But yeah, thinking of it, when I got back from the Barn, I _did_ expect you to be gone then, too.”

“That’s not the way it goes,” Nathan says bitterly. “I’m always the one left behind.”

He wishes it unsaid immediately, but Haven has never granted his wishes.

“Not this time,” Duke says, almost fiercely, as he grabs Nathan’s arm. “Nathan, there’s something I have to tell you.”

Nathan goes numb inside as well as out. “Another secret?”

“No, but I have a feeling if I don’t spell it out for you, you’ll never figure it out.”

That stings more than it probably should, and Nathan pulls away from his grip. “I don’t have time for—”

“I’m in love with Jennifer.”

For a moment, Nathan wonders if the pressure bubble has expanded to include him in its sphere. He can’t think, can’t feel, can’t even move, motor skills deserting him along with the power of speech.

“It kind of snuck up on me,” Duke says with the beginnings of a smile Nathan’s never seen on him before, “but I really do love her. And if I haven’t completely screwed things up with her in the past couple days, then I think she loves me too. I mean, she moved onto the _Cape Rouge_.”

Now Nathan knows what to think.

He has handfuls of Duke’s shirt in his hands, pressing him back a step (still well away from the pressure bubble, though) as anger writhes in his mind like livewires. “How could you do that to Audrey?” he growls. “After everything, how could you even—”

“Because Audrey doesn’t love me, Nathan. She had a chance, I’ll admit it, but nothing ever happened—because before I ever even met her, she was already in love with you.”

Nathan’s backing away, but Duke now has his hands around his wrists, keeping him from letting go entirely. 

“Why do you think Sarah fell for you so fast? Why would Audrey—leaning on Lexie’s memories—agree to a date with you? Audrey said you were her first friend in Haven. She always went to you. Talked to you. Confided in you. _Trusted_ you. She wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable around you. Why? Because, Nathan, she _loves_ you.”

“Guys?”

Nathan startles and Duke must too because Nathan stumbles a bit with the release of pressure from his wrists. Audrey’s brow wrinkles as she studies them, but she must decide whatever was happening is part of their ongoing feud because she seemingly shrugs it away (Nathan hopes his face doesn’t betray how relieved he is by this reprieve).

“We have to get to Aidan if we want to calm him down, but to do that we need—”

“I know a guy,” Duke says with a snap of his fingers. “He can get us three suits perfect for deep sea diving.”

“Well, can he do it fast?” Audrey asks. “Because if this pressure bubble hits the hospital generator, there’s not going to be much of Haven left.”

* * *

Nathan thinks the world is spinning because of Duke’s words echoing in his ears. He thinks the drag to his movement is because of the weight of the suit locking him inside its dubious protection. He thinks everything will be fine the minute they can get Parker to Aidan to talk him down.

But then the world stops moving entirely before tilting and going sideways. His eyes are sliding shut, darkness closing in around him, and something’s wrong. There are voices in his ear ( _Because, Nathan, she loves you_ ), looping and repeating and rising and falling with emotions he can’t quite reach out and grab hold of.

“I’ll take him. You’ve got to get to Aidan.”

“No! No! You know the deep-sea breathing techniques, Duke—you go. I’m not leaving him, not again. Go, Duke!”

Audrey. No, wait, Lexie. No, no, of course not, it’s Audrey. Audrey who came out of the Barn. Audrey who emerged from the doorway and the seething nexus between this world and wherever she came from. Audrey who looked at him on that hilltop with that open expression. Who leaned into his touch. Who watched him as if he were the most important thing there.

Audrey who asked after him, who dressed up for their date, who laughed with him and teased him. Audrey who said that he only wanted a woman she used to be. 

Audrey who said she didn’t love him (but she fidgeted even while she was sure to meet his eyes, and in Lexie, he thought that was discomfort, but it was Audrey and he knows what Audrey looks like when she’s lying).

“Nathan? Nathan, stay with me. Nathan!” 

He’s never heard her say his name like that. Broken and wavering, small and helpless and fierce all at once. It’s strange and unfamiliar, but she says it as if she’s played this moment out before.

The world tilts, the darkness blurs, she’s telling him to walk, to move, and he tries (he always tries, but this is the first time in such a long time that he thinks he might actually succeed). And the park moves around them, the pathway falling away behind them. 

Too slow, though. Even he, in his dulled state, can tell that. 

But then, just like he has so often lately, Duke comes through for them. 

The pressure bubble shrinks and fades and vanishes (another man facing a Trouble; another family broken by something they have no control over; another son doomed to live out the fears of his parents). 

Audrey’s breath is harsh and shallow and staggered in his ear as blackness threatens to envelop him completely.

Then his helmet’s off, oxygen tastes crisp and clear on his tongue, and Audrey’s face is revealed as she tugs her own helmet off to reveal the tears staining her cheeks, blotting her dark mascara. There’s fear, written there in blue in a way he’s seen only rarely and always thought he’d imagined.

There’s traces of Sarah lurking there in her eyes, gentle and _yearning_ and so full of emotion that brims over in Audrey’s face.

“Nathan!” She pulls him closer, heavy gloves and suit keeping him from flinching away (or maybe just leaning in). “Are you okay? Are you all right? Nathan!”

Everything he thought he knew…everything he’s reconciled himself to…everything that has been his reality for almost a year… It’s all wrong. Untrue. 

A lie.

“You love me,” he breathes out. He’s never heard his own voice like this, so full of wonder and awe and everything he thought could never be a part of his life. It’s his fantasy, his dearest wish, and speaking it aloud is more terrifying than anything since seeing Audrey step into the Barn.

“Nathan,” she whispers.

“You love me,” he says again, suddenly alert, grasping for her hands, fighting the weight that holds him back. “Audrey, if you kill me, the Troubles _will_ —”

“No!” Standing, backing away, Audrey looks down on him with wide eyes and a trembling mouth and indecision he’s never seen in her before. “No,” she says again, more firmly. “I won’t kill you, because… Because I do love you, Nathan, and that—that makes this my choice. We’ll find another way.”

(Nathan wonders if she knows that she’s lying.)

(He wonders if she’s never really been lying to him at all. If all along, she’s only ever been lying to herself.)

* * *

His Bronco is still parked outside the Herald. Nathan notes it as they escort him into his prison cell. His Guards shove him so he stumbles, toss him a greasy wrapped sandwich, and then settle in to ignore him (Vince and Dave _are_ keeping news of these last few days quiet, then; that’s something, at least). These few Guards have been his nightly wardens enough times before that Nathan knows they’ll soon fall asleep—he doesn’t need enhanced hearing to catch their eventual snores. Lockpicking is incredibly complicated when he can’t feel any of the responses, but he has loads of time and enough anger to keep him motivated until the door finally clicks open.

Nathan locks and closes the door behind, strides past the sleeping Guard-members, and hotwires the Bronco into roaring life. Depending on how sincere Dwight was (or was not) about letting Nathan help with the Troubles, it could be as long as a day or two before anyone even realizes he’s not in that backroom anymore. Not that Nathan needs that long. He only needs a few hours, probably, if that, but some engrained sense of caution has him parking the Bronco deep in a wooded clearing and then hiking the mile to the _Gray Gull_.

The steps up to Audrey’s apartment are so familiar it takes him back to all the other times he’s trodden these steps on his way to see Parker, accompanied by the scuff of his treads against weathered wood and the beating of his pulse (of hope he couldn’t acknowledged) in his ears.

Countless times coming to pick her up, their friendship new and exciting and _everything_ to him. The Christmas party in July, when he walked up to what he thought would be a quiet meeting and found a room full of people who didn’t shrink away from his presence. Coming with the papers on the Hunter Meteor Storm in his hands that fell to scatter across the deck when he found her door open and her apartment a mess and herself missing. Spending the night when he got her back, watching her from across her apartment, steady and sure to counter the nightmares that jolted her awake over and over again. Pancakes in the morning and smiles between them, arguments and miscommunication, crossed wires that led to him demanding she not give up and her kissing him (kissing him as consolation prize, he thought, to make up for her later absence; now he wonders if maybe that kiss wasn’t her own personal goodbye as she chose to give him up for the greater good). Another night spent here, his blood in her bathroom, her bandages over the tattoo he tried to turn into a scar, her body warm and weighted against his as he counted her breaths to make up for all the years he’d been afraid she would be gone from him. Coming up to get her for a date, the only date they’ve really gone on in all this time, Nathan and Lexie, Nathan and Audrey, Nathan and _Parker_ (Parker, who continually gives him up because she has been conditioned and programmed to believe that saving people means self-sacrifice and freeing them from her presence).

Light pours out from the glass door, the sheer curtains lending it a softer ambience against the moonlit darkness. The susurration of the surf, the clatter of whoever’s cleaning up the closed bar, it blends into the hesitant piano notes spilling out from Audrey’s apartment (Lucy peeking out from Lexie’s façade and Audrey’s eyes, and Nathan wonders if he’s a terrible person for wishing for just a hint of Sarah, the one iteration who actually chose him, to also show herself).

Nathan takes a deep breath (feels his rage stir and resettle inside him, mixed and mingled and remade with the shards of hope and the beginnings of cold resignation), and then raps his knuckles firmly against the wood framing of the door.

The piano falls silent.

The door opens.

“I love you,” he tells her (the truth he’s never spoken, the one thing he’s kept back from her because he thought it was what she wanted). “So by your logic, that means you going into the Barn was my decision—one you took away from me.”

“Nathan.” She’s exasperated (afraid), trying to ask him why he’s there (as if _he’s_ the ambiguous one), if anyone followed him. Nathan’s not listening (she’s had her chance to talk and she used it to tell lies; now it’s his turn and he can only counter by telling truth).

“Which means,” he says over her, “that you owe me _this_ choice. At least a say in it. After everything, you _owe_ me that.”

It’s strange. He can hear his own breathing, ragged and heavy, as if he’s done more than just put to words what’s been boiling inside him since she told him her time was limited and that was that (since she gave up the way the Barn programmed her to).

“I’m not killing you,” Audrey says after a long moment. Her shoulders sag. “I _can’t_.”

And it’s Audrey, here in front of him, Audrey as she hasn’t let him see (all her facades stripped away). Tired and small and wrung out and _exhausted_ , desperate and panicked and frantic. She’s been lying to him for a long time (lying to them both), but it has cost her in ways she never really let him see until now. (He cannot help but wonder if he’s been similarly exposed before her with his own released truth, his scars raw and pulsing under her tentative gaze.

Carefully, Nathan eases into the apartment until the door is closed behind them and they’re both sitting on the couch, a foot of distance between them (for all he understands her now, his anger is still too close to the surface for him to risk being any closer). 

“I’m sorry,” he offers. “I know this isn’t an easy thing to ask of you—”

“Do you?” she interrupts, her eyes flashing above the dark hollows staining her cheekbones. “You have no _idea_ what it’s like to stand over your body, Nathan. To know I could have prevented it. To know it’s _my_ fault—”

“ _I_ have no idea?” he asks incredulously. “Do you even hear yourself? _You_ have no idea, Audrey, okay? For _months_ I thought I was responsible for your death! I _know_ I’m responsible for James’, for Howard’s, for thirty-five people who died because of _me_ , because I couldn’t let you go! You…” The words halt, stuck in his throat behind something he can’t feel. 

Audrey’s there, suddenly, standing in front of him (when did he move from the couch?), her hands on his arms (safely over his sleeves so he only feels a distant sort of pressure, like thunder for lightning lost to the distance).

“You were dead,” he whispers. “The Barn fractured into a million pieces and you were just gone. The sky was on fire and everywhere I looked there was blood. I couldn’t get away from the screams. And every day, it got worse. Every day, I saw just how much my selfishness cost everyone. Duke came back. _You_ …you’re here. But James? All those innocent people caught in my crossfire? I can never make up for that. But maybe…”

“Nathan.” Her voice is soft, soothing, and the look in her eyes is _knowing_. She knows, somehow, understands in some way his pain (though how can she, he wonders, when she has always been and always will be a savior, not a destroyer like him). “Shh, I’m here, Nathan. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

And even though this isn’t what he came for (isn’t even something he’d considered or imagined), Nathan feels himself crumpling. From the inside working its way out (like cracks in the ground opening up into chasms), he finally stumbles and falters under the weight of guilt and pain and grief he’s been carrying for over half a year. And he feels every second of it, the shaking in his hands as he clasps Audrey’s, the heat of tears on his cheeks as she presses her face to his, the shattering of his heart as he finally sees her heart laid bare and open in her eyes.

She loves him, and he’s asking her to kill him (his blood on her hands, his body in her arms, his grave stamped over her future). 

She loves him despite everything he’s taken from her and cost her ( _James_ ).

She loves him and this is all they will ever have (a possibility, a potential cut short).

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into her ear. “I know this is the hardest thing I could possibly ask of you. I know how much it will hurt you. But…” He breathes her in, lilies and lilac and the powdery scent of her heavy makeup. She loves him and she _chooses_ him, has chosen him over the town (chose him in that Barn, with their son in her arms and the truth in her ears, with the fate of the Troubles only a gunshot away, and she chose to give up everything, over and over and over again, so he could live; and now he asks her to throw it away because he cannot bear to live with the alternative) in a way no one else has ever done for him before.

And he’s selfish, so selfish, because he _wants_ this. He’s always wanted it, really, but has rarely let himself really think on it. But now, with her in his arms and their future so short, now he _wants_.

And he cannot have it. He cannot keep this. 

This was never meant for him.

“Duke had to kill his brother,” he makes himself say. “And now _he_ has the blood of someone he loved on his hands, and that’s on me. And Jack and Aidan have to worry about their son and nephew. And Carrie’s Trouble will come back one day. And that’s on me, too, too. On us. Because we could end the Troubles once and for all with just one single life voluntarily given.”

“One death,” she says in a choked voice. And she’s holding onto him, her hands in his hair, stroking down along either side of his jaw. “You’d be dead, Nathan, and this time, it’d be forever. No Troubles to bring you back. No Barn to give you a redo. You’d be gone _forever_ and I’d be left here all alone, and it’d be all my fault.”

“No. _No_ , Parker, this has nothing to do with fault or with death. Don’t you see? This is how I make up for my mistakes. This is how I prove the Guard wrong. This is how we save Duke from the Crocker curse and free Dwight from that vest and ease the Teagues’ burden. _This_ is how I can save instead of destroy. How I can finally be your ally instead of your opponent.” Her hair is like silk against his fingers, her warmth reminding him of what it is to be cold, and contradictorily, what it is to be warmed and comforted, to be held close and cherished. “And the fact that this will work…that it’s you giving me this chance…that you love me… That’s the greatest gift of all. If you think about it…this is the most loving thing we could possibly do—how many other couples just as in love as us will we be able to give a chance? A chance to be happy. A chance to be together—”

“A chance we’ll never get.” Audrey tilts her head up, close, so close that her breath stutters over his lips and her tears are caught against his skin, so close he almost thinks he can feel the patter of her breaking heartbeat even through the barriers between them. “And I do love you, Nathan. I think I’ve loved you since you first pulled me out of my car and acted like it was no big deal.” Her lips graze his, a spark of lightning that illuminates him, sets him ablaze. “Or maybe since you brought me coffee and gave me rides and made me laugh.” Her lips trace his face, a touch as purposeful and intense as it is astounding. “Or since you opened your home to me to catch a killer and watched old sci-fi shows with me as if you weren’t afraid.” This kiss is longer, her lips parting ad catching his, leaving him reeling, gasping for air as he holds onto her hips to keep from stumbling. “Or maybe it was all of it, the way you accepted everything—that old article, Lucy, the Troubles, the Rev, _Sarah_ , the Barn—all of it. I have no idea who I am or _what_ I am, but you—”

“You’re Parker.” This time, finally, he’s brave enough to lean forward and chase this kiss. “I don’t care who or what or how.” She doesn’t run, doesn’t shut him out. Instead, she wraps her arms around his neck (he remembers another hug, terror at her kidnapping giving way to blinding relief as she ran for him and leaped toward him, _trusted_ him to catch her). “You’re Parker. And I love you.”

For a breathless instant, she draws back just far enough to look at him. One finger draws a line down the side of his face, giving shape to the confines of his physical form (and here is his glimpse of Sarah, a flash of her playful side, so drawn to him, so free with him, reaching out and inviting him close). The touch is tiny, nearly infinitesimal, but it seems to free him from his limitations so that he feels as if he could fly and feel and _live_. 

“Nathan,” she names him (chooses him) and this kiss is so deep, so hungry, that Nathan knows there’s no going back from this. No pretending it away. No ignoring it and letting Haven push them apart yet again. Her lips slide over and between his, sucking and tasting and pulling, and her hands are in so many places he’s overwhelmed. On his face, around his neck, down his stomach, and then _under_ his shirt, sliding up until her palm is pressed over his pounding heart and Nathan is abruptly frozen.

He _wants_ this. He is dizzy with wanting, hungry with desire, delirious with greed. 

But.

“Parker,” he tries to say, tries to move away (they are mirror reflections, each one moving forward only when the other draws back, always connected but never quite connect _ing_ ). “We shouldn’t—we can’t—”

“Please.” There is something broken in her voice, small and pleading in a way he never realized Parker could be. But there’s also something strong and certain, there, as if she’s made her choice, in a terrible situation, maybe, but still a choice she knowingly makes. “I just… Just for one night…can’t we just be _this_? I want this, Nathan. I want _you_.” Her mouth is hot and wet, her touch so gentle he strains toward it. “I choose this.”

“And then we save Haven?” he asks, though his hands are tight on her hips to keep her from stepping away now that he’s stepping forward, closer, tighter, his breath panting between them.

Audrey squeezes her eyes shut (he can only imagine all the lives she’s seeing, broken and cut short, playing there in the darkness to lend her determination). “Yes,” she whimpers.

And then her eyes flash open and her arms twine around him, pulling him in, running through his hair, mapping the lines of his wakening body. “But tomorrow. Tonight, I want a memory I can hold onto. I want something to remember. Something they can’t steal from me. I want you, for as long as I can have you.”

“You’ve had me since the beginning,” he murmurs against lilac-scented skin, and then the last of the barriers between them come toppling down.

She’s light in his arms as he sweeps her up, warm against him as he sets her down on something solid, eager and questing and so soft, so gentle, so _everything_ he’s ever wanted that Nathan is lost in her.

One night, he thinks. This night is theirs. Tomorrow, they can let Haven (with all its needs and its flaws and its frailties) in. But tonight, it’s just them, Audrey and Nathan, Nathan and Parker, and in her arms, his Troubles vanish.

In her arms, he’s alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, I cannot tell you all how happy I am that we've finally made it to this moment. This is actually one of my favorite chapters, all the more so because it's taken so long to get here! Anyway, hope you all enjoyed it, and please feel free to drop a review and let me know what you think of it -- and if you were as close to thinking it would never happen as I was!


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